Ventura District May Redraw Boundaries

If enrollment at Buena High School keeps swelling beyond that of Ventura High, the unpopular practice of redrawing attendance boundaries may be the only way to alleviate the problem, a school district official said Tuesday.

It has been just three years since the Ventura Unified School District overhauled its boundaries. The bitterly fought move, which pitted neighborhood against neighborhood, was sparked in part by the need to equalize enrollment at the city’s two public high schools.

But in a report presented to the Board of Education on Tuesday, district administrators said that Buena’s student body has continued to grow while Ventura’s has remained largely stagnant.

If the trend continues, the imbalance could result in fewer honors courses being offered at Ventura High or increased problems with graffiti and violence at the bulging Buena campus, board member Diane Harriman said in an interview before the meeting.

“You just do not want high schools with 3,000 students,” said Harriman, a former high school teacher. “And we can’t afford for Ventura to lose any more students. We may have to go through another awful boundary change.”

The most recent state figures showed Buena’s enrollment at 2,324, or 479 more students than Ventura’s, the report says.

While it is difficult to project whether the trend will continue, almost all new homes are being built in the city’s east end, said Patricia Chandler, assistant superintendent of educational services.

“If you take a look at the building in Ventura, it is all taking place in Buena’s district,” Chandler said.

Board members requested a study comparing the two high schools to respond to assertions by some critics that Buena’s academic program is superior to Ventura’s. The 28-page report created by Chandler concludes that slight differences between the two schools do exist.

Although the number of honors courses offered at the campuses is similar and the schools’ ethnic makeup is nearly the same, Buena continues to score higher on achievement tests than its cross-town rival, Chandler said.

Although Ventura High has made gains in recent years, particularly in reading scores, a gap still exists, she said.

Last year, Buena ninth-graders scored an average 57 on a standardized test measuring reading skills, one point higher than Ventura’s ninth-graders. And Buena students scored an average 62 on math tests, seven points above Ventura students. The national average score for each test is 50.

Ventura High has nearly doubled its proportion of low-income students who speak little or no English during the past five years, Chandler said. About 7% of students spoke a language other than English in 1990; this year the number has swelled to 12%, she said.

Six percent of Buena’s students this year were non-English-speakers, she said.

Among other recommendations, Chandler said before Tuesday’s meeting, Buena educators should share math curricula with Ventura. And Ventura counselors and teachers should promote preparation for the Scholastic Assessment Tests with its college-bound students.

Chandler added that she will advise trustees to consider adding portable classrooms or renovating Buena’s campus to house the expected influx of new students.

But Harriman rejects the idea of simply adding costly temporary classrooms at Buena to accommodate overflow students, which she called a short-term solution to a problem that will likely only get worse.