Believes new school doesn't help

As it stands, three elementary schools and one middle school are slated to be shut down. All of them exist in the central part of Camarillo between Las Posas and Lewis.

It is my contention that our school board is mostly responsible for a lot of this happening. When Mr. Moffett recently stated, "Well, nobody could turn down a brand new school," he was making reference to the outcry about Rancho Rosal being built and offered to a new community while our established neighborhood schools are being shut down. Also, Rancho Rosal has the lowest enrollment in the entire district at only 365 students. In spite of the fact that the school was built by a developer for the school district, it still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in infrastructure and staff to open a school and to operate it, so there is no "for free."

Another issue is that of University Prep. This was supposed to be a temporary situation for Channel Islands University.

Currently, University Prep is leasing the old El Rancho site for $1 a year. It is not part of our school district yet has more than 300 students from surrounding neighborhoods in Camarillo attending. Mr. Moffet stated that each student is worth over $5,000 to the district per year and yet the district is not realizing any of that money, approximately $1.5 million. That figure alone is equal to the estimated cost savings of shutting down all the schools per year. I would like to note that this campus is located in the same part of town where all of our school closures will take place.

With a school board that has just spent $300,000 over the last eight years on a unification program that is no closer today than it was eight years ago, I fear that our school district will be the one to lose out in the end because of a single-sighted school board that has diluted our school district of students with new school openings and several magnet schools located all over the city instead of focusing on condensing our school district all along and not tearing apart communities all at once. Michelle Carvalho Camarillo