High school issues are in the trustees' hands

Strangely, many residents are still addressing the City Council on matters relating to Yorba Linda’s long-awaited public high school.

Speakers often ask council members to move forward with the city’s first high school during the council’s public comment period, and a recent Letter to the Editor in the Star berated the council for pushing the Town Center project instead of the new high school.

Actually, all high school issues are now in the hands of the five elected trustees of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. And they’ve consistently maintained the new campus on north Fairmont Boulevard will be ready for students in the fall of 2008.

Of course, the school was delayed because trustees had to sue the city’s Redevelopment Agency to obtain funding the city promised the school district under a 1983 agreement. A further delay occurred when council members appealed a ruling in favor of the schools.

But eventually, the city and school district settled the long-running feud, partly because council members couldn’t spend redevelopment money on their Town Center project until they reached a new agreement with the school district.

The city spent $1,405,511 on the lawsuit and another $583,518 on the appeal.

Meanwhile, school officials are moving ahead with site acquisition and educational specifications for the campus, which will open to 9^th and 10^th grade students.

Superintendent Dennis Smith recently told his 29-member Community Advisory Council that the district is planning a comprehensive boundary-adjustment process.

The process is likely to begin next year and will require a full year to establish a recommendation for consideration by trustees, Smith told the Advisory Council.

At the beginning of the current school year, 3,769 Yorba Linda students were enrolled at the district’s three comprehensive high schools, including 2,469 at Esperanza, 1,029 at El Dorado and 271 at Valencia. The previous year’s total was 3,594 Yorba Linda students.

Obviously, not all Yorba Linda students will attend the new high school. The boundary committee, headed by Assistant Superintendent David Verdugo, will have a challenging task as the group works out attendance areas for the high school and its feeder schools.

Smith told Advisory Council members that enrollment at each comprehensive high schools will range from 1,600 to 2,000 students, when the Yorba Linda campus is ready.

The district also will carry out an extensive demographic study to develop long-range enrollment projections for all of its schools, according to Smith.

A FINAL NOTE—Yorba Linda students continue to flock to the open-enrollment International Baccalaureate and computer technology programs at Valencia High School.

Next year’s IB program will enroll 333 students, including 145 from Yorba Linda. The computer tech sequence will enroll 143 students, including 51 from Yorba Linda.

And dozens of Yorba Linda students in the seventh- and eighth-grade GATE magnet program at Kraemer Middle School will be taking nine classes on the Valencia campus.

The classes include Honors Algebra, Honors Geometry, Geometry, Algebra II/Trig, Biology, Beginning Drama, Computer Applications, French I and Japanese I.