January 29, 2024 Town Hall News
The Porter Ranch Community School (PRCS) is the only school in LAUSD that is capped out, no longer taking new students, even as new families buy into the neighborhood. While this is a good problem to have according to Dr. David Baca, LAUSD Regional Superintendent, he was faced with a gym full of parents, vocal and armed with signs, worried about whether their children would be able to continue through and graduate from the K-8 school. And there were another 340 people attending the meeting on Zoom.
All the meeting slides are available on our slideshow above.
Parents expressed concern about a lack of transparency in solving this problem along with significant fears that the middle school would be moved to Chatsworth.
Baca began by sharing enrollment numbers, showing that overall enrollment increased by 164 students in the last four years, reaching a total of 1,386, while the Korean Dual Language program remained steady at around 142 students. PRCS has had to turn away about 70 students trying to help them find other schools to attend. He acknowledged that in the next eight years the problem would continue as the number of new homes being sold in the community is increasing. They described this as a bubble working its way through and expect enrollment to drop in eight years.
LAUSD did not share numbers splitting out the elementary and middle school attendees, but a parent confirmed that the middle school currently held 380 students, has a capacity of 400 and the middle school buildings currently house seven classes of 4th and 5th graders. Of note is that the rest of LAUSD is experiencing declining enrollment of 3.4% per year.
Baca confirmed that they had been exploring moving the middle school to Chatsworth High School, where it would operate independently, with transportation provided from PRCS. Students would have a separate entrance, separate facilities, and contiguous set of buildings. Immediately upon mentioning the word Chatsworth, the crowd booed and Baca was not able to finish describing the Chatsworth option. When he confirmed that he understood that they didn’t want Chatsworth High School as an option, everyone clapped.
The District recently conducted a survey asking for parent suggestions to address this problem and Baca shared the ideas mentioning that the age of the respondent’s children probably factored into their suggestions about moving Transitional Kindergarten (TK). Parent ideas included stopping Toll Brothers from building new homes, requiring them to build a school or provide buildings, revoking permits, redrawing boundaries, adding buildings to the PRCS campus, phasing out middle school or part of it, and moving some grades to the nearby park.
PRCS currently has 63 students attending from out of the area, on permit. No new permits are being issued. The current attendance boundaries include an area (marked B on the map) comprised of the Heights and Promenade, where families have the option to choose PRCS or Castlebay for elementary and PRCS or Frost for middle school. While those boundaries could be changed to possibly eliminate PRCS from the B area, that did not yield that many students to solve this problem.
Solutions involving adding buildings, whether as bungalows or permanent, seeking alternate plans for the TK program and consulting with Toll Brothers require more exploration.
During the comment and question period, parents stated that this problem should have been anticipated and wanted to know where were their tax dollars going?
Current and former members of the Porter Ranch Neighborhood Council attended the meeting. PRNC President Becky Leveque, who was not able to attend, shares, “The thing that is hard to grasp is how long it takes to plan and build a school or the addition of a building.” This school was initially planned as an elementary school in the early 80s, with the specifics being hammered out in the 7 years prior to the 2012 opening. The final planning was only possible due to a bond to fund construction. As the unique planning partnership comprised of LAUSD, Council District 12, the developers, PRNC and stakeholders, considered the demographic projections, they expanded the school from an elementary school to a K-8 span school on a larger lot with an expansion pad for the middle school. This expansion was possible due to the developers giving more land to the project. The second middle school building opened in 2017, another remarkable feat: getting a building added to a LAUSD campus.
Parents were frustrated wanting to know how long it takes to come up with a solution and possibly get a new building, and furthermore, who is the decision maker? Members of the last planning team know that it takes a long time and there are many decision makers. The decision makers likely comprise Dr. Baca and his colleagues along with School Board Member Scott Schmerelson, who was present, with input from City Councilman John Lee and possibly from Toll Brothers. Depending on their recommended solution, LAUSD School Board approval could be required.
City Councilmember John Lee was on hand and shared that he, as a former parent and current City Councilmember, has been an ardent supporter of PRCS. No one has raised more money for the school than he has. He commented on the idea to put classrooms in a park saying that the law calls for a certain amount of green space when building new homes, and legally, the park cannot be given to the school. He offered to raise $500,000 for bungalows on campus.
Baca, who did an admirable job in a tough situation, concluded the meeting saying that they planned to investigate all options and come up with a solution by the end of the school year, they would reach out to a smaller group to continue discussing the options and would hold another Town Hall no later than May.
More news coverage:
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/on-air/porter-ranch-parents-protest-to-not...
https://www.foxla.com/news/fox-11-blocked-from-porter-ranch-school-meeti...
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/lausd-looks-for-solutions-after-...
https://www.foxla.com/video/1403068
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-30/as-lausd-enrollment-...
