Superintendent: School Transition Process Going Smoothly

As many local parents and students are still dealing with the closure of Moiola K-8 school and the redrawing of the Fountain Valley School District's boundary lines, Superintendent Mark Ecker said Friday that the transition process to this point is moving along smoothly.

Parents received letters in mid-February outlining which elementary school their children would attend, and open houses at the district's campuses began shortly thereafter. The district has maintained a relatively open policy regarding intradistrict transfers for its students, and, Ecker said, such requests would be received even more openly during the transition process, space permitting.

"We've had wonderful responses to our open houses and tours," he said. "We really urge that before you put in a transfer request, you go to the school and see what's happening."

Ecker and the rest of the school board maintained throughout the boundary process that all of the district's schools were outstanding, and that parents should keep that in mind before rushing to request a transfer. Their stance seems to be supported by the 18 percent of students who transfer in from outside the district, without whom the district might have been forced to close two campuses instead of just one.

"We're really trying to turn this into an opportunity," Ecker said. "We're at our highest enrollent in many years, and we're getting a lot of notoriety, so we hope that will attract more interdistrict transfers. We depend on those quite a bit."

The district's ultimate goal is to balance enrollment at its campuses within the next two to three years, Ecker said, but the district will allow a certain degree of imbalance during the first year to mitigate the impact of the closure and new boundaries.

Will your child be attending a new school next year? Have you attended any of the district's open houses, and will you be putting in for a transfer? Let us know!