State hearing on district unification delayed
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

Pleasant Valley School District officials asked the state recently to hold an appeals hearing on unification two months later than expected.

It had been anticipated that in July the California State Board of Education would settle whether voters could decide if the school district would include area high school students.

Regardless of whether the state hears the appeals in July or September, the earliest unification could appear on the ballot would have been November 2008, said Gene Browning, Ventura County assistant registrar.

The state board could hear in September the appeals from the Oxnard Union High School District and a group of 11 individuals. Because the state board meets every other month, the next possible board meeting would not be until November.

"This can't be considered a delay in any sense of the word," said Marguerite Mary Leoni, the attorney representing Pleasant Valley. "The process moves at the rate it moves."

Leoni said that scheduling the hearing in September gives her and the school board more time to prepare for the appeal. Recent administrative changes in the district leadership would restrict the time trustees could devote to helping Leoni prepare for a July hearing, she stated in an April 25 letter to the state agency.

The district's interim superintendent, Ken Moffett, resigned a few days after Leoni's letter.

"We've been accused all these years of delaying unification when we really haven't, and now they're the ones that requested the delay," said Tom Griffin, attorney for the Oxnard Union High School District. "We would just as well get the issue resolved. . . . All of this delay works to the detriment of the high school district; it probably works to the detriment of both districts."

Griffin said he realizes that a July hearing was never certain and that the state agency does need sufficient time to thoroughly analyze the appeal. Griffin said an additional two months in a matter that's spanned several years is "not critical," but the implication of the request is that Pleasant Valley doesn't want unification before the public while parents are in uproar over school closures.

Camarillo parents began staging rallies and protests earlier this year after an advisory committee recommended the district close three schools. In addition, after trustees voted to close two schools and move, reconfigure and restructure others in March, several parents began an effort to open a charter school.

Griffin said the buying power of the $135 million bond voters passed in 2004- Measure H- has diminished with time and further delays only worsen the situation. The Oxnard school district was going to use the money to build two high schools; the first was expected to be built in Somis, he said.

Oxnard will have to "rethink that," Griffin said, "because there may not be enough money left for two high schools."