CUSD Update

Oxford Preparatory Academy has been approved to grow to 772 students next year. On Feb. 25, the Capo district board of trustees voted to expand Oxford on the campus it shares with Barcelona Hills Elementary School. The board voted 6-1 (Lynn Hatton dissenting) to allow the expansion. In a separate vote, trustees unanimously supported giving Oxford all but two classrooms. Barcelona will close.

The meeting drew a large crowd, with standing room only in the board room. An adjacent spillover room filled as the meeting began, and others stood outside the board room.

CUSD is obligated by Prop 39 to provide classrooms for Oxford as a charter school. As additional factors, Oxford has a waiting list and Barcelona’s enrollment is declining. Having the two schools share a campus caused friction between the groups, leading to the trustees’ approval last month of up to $20,000 for a mediator.

On another agenda item, trustees approved Map J with a 4-3 vote (Ellen Addonizio, Sue Palazzo and Lynn Hatton dissenting). Map J is the tenth version in redrawing of trustee areas. The board majority’s direction in drawing Map J was supposed to avoid cutting across city boundaries.

Map J not only failed to keep cities intact (Mission Viejo will have two trustee areas), it put high schools and middle schools of some cities into different trustee areas. A political impact of Map J is the elimination of one of the minority trustees by putting Sue Palazzo and Ellen Addonizio in the same area. The teachers union had been targeting Palazzo as a reform trustee who would have been up for reelection in November 2012.

In the 2010 General Election, a union-driven campaign convinced voters to vote against voting. CUSD constituents voted on all seven trustees prior to the last election. In November 2010, voters passed Measure H, which allows them to vote only on the trustee who represents the area in which they reside.