PVSD again redraws boundaries
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

The Pleasant Valley School District has changed school attendance boundaries again.

The school board last week unanimously approved allowing Los Primeros School of Sciences and Arts to enroll students selected through a lottery, which means the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school no longer has geographic attendance boundaries. The move also meant a rearrangement of boundaries for other schools, primarily El Descanso and Dos Caminos elementary and Las Colinas and Monte Vista middle schools.

The changes took effect April 22 for the 2008-09 school year.

Trustees emphasized at the April 17 meeting that no current student at Los Primeros School of Sciences and Arts will be forced to change schools. The district will also give siblings of current students and children living in the neighborhood or with a home in escrow by July 1 priority in the school's lottery.

To see the changes on the district's website, www.pvsd.k12.ca.us/ and click on "see the agenda here" to view the April 17 agenda. Click on "meetings," then agenda item L1. To view new elementary school boundaries, click on the "Download Now" icon for Attachment 3 under "Supporting Documents" or the same icon for Attachment 5 for middle school boundaries.

"We are very happy we have the lottery restored," said LPSSA parent Ronda Smith after the board meeting.

The school board upset many Los Primeros parents last year after essentially transforming Los Primeros Structured School, the predecessor to Los Primeros School of Sciences and Arts.

The board moved the school to a campus across town and dropped the school's "structured" aspect- a back-to-basics type environment with a dress and behavior code- for a particular focus or "magnet."

The change meant no difference in funding, but it did eliminate the enrollment lottery system and other unique features of the popular structured school that had been in place for years.

Some Los Primeros parents protested the move by taking their children out of Pleasant Valley schools.

Many others, however, took a wait-and-see attitude and kept their children at the school, which earlier this month was named the Los Primeros School of Sciences and Arts.

"We're opening a new door, and we're moving forward," said Kathy Matsumori of LPSSA's reinstated enrollment lottery. Matsumori works at the school, and her children graduated from the structured Los Primeros school.

Pleasant Valley plans to send out letters this week to LPSSA families and homes surrounding the school, notifying them of the changes.