San Clemente Group Wants Out of Capo Unified

By Martin Henderson

Frustrated by what they describe as a lack of transparency and the growing number of students who do not meet California University entrance eligibility requirements, a band of San Clemente residents have taken the first steps toward breaking away from the Capistrano Unified School District.

Their hopes for a San Clemente Unified School District is likely years away, but it may not be the decade-long quest many think. The journey begins in earnest on Tuesday, Oct. 27, with a public meeting at the San Clemente Community Center.

The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the San Clemente Community Center and will be under the direction of Craig Delahooke, one of five core members of the movement along with Paige Foreman, Heather Brown, Val Meyer and Wendy Shrove.

The meeting’s purpose is to see what kind of support there is in the community to secede from a large district that is seen as increasingly dysfunctional and aloof.

A spokesman for the Capistrano Unified School District did not respond to requests for an interview for this story.

Fewer than 53 percent of graduating seniors met the A-G course requirements to enter University of California and California State University, although there are alternative methods such as scores on SATs, Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams. Additionally, there has been an influx of charter schools, whose enrollment is going up while the district’s Average Daily Attendance (ADA) is going down — the ADA helps determine how much money the district gets from the state. CUSD last year didn’t meet most of the 12 goals it set for itself in the state-mandated state’s Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP); in fact, the only goal it fully met was having a 180-day school year.

Shrove says these are red flags that could signal the right time for Orange County’s southernmost community to take care of itself.

“If only 50 percent qualify for our own colleges, what happens to the other 50 percent who don’t, what’s going to happen to them,” Shrove asked. “How are they going to live in South Orange County?”

The group has a Facebook site where more information can be found, Facebook.com/CitizensForSCUSD/.

Other areas of concern identified by the group include CUSD’s inconsistent boundaries, its size (54,000 enrollment), its lack of communication with the community, and its consideration of a bond measure to improve facilities. They worry that San Clemente will get shorted, something they say has happened in the past in the refurbishment process.

“We would not be considering having our own school district if we were happy with what we have,” said Shrove. “I’m hoping we have a good showing. It’s about the will of the community to see this through. If I go forward 10 years and think all we had to do was rally the community and the process wasn’t as complicated as it was made out to be, I’d feel terrible because I think we can do better. ... When I consider the alternative, I don’t see it getting better. I see the same old same old.”

The 64-school district has about 54,000 students enrolled, but only about 48,000 Average Daily Attendance for which it receives $7,643 funding per student from the state to deal with the general populous of students. Much of that difference between the enrollment and ADA appears to be the exodus to charter schools, apparently by students whose parents are looking for an alternative to the public school education CUSD provides. Charter school enrollment in CUSD has doubled over the last four school school years to almost 4,000 students.

Shrove said the experience of the core group and its research has shown that students in smaller districts of 15,000 or fewer tend to do better. Although Superintendent Kirsten Vital, in a promo video for CUSD on the district site says “we have earned our reputation over the years as the top school district in the state,” she describes CUSD in the very next sentence with a qualifier: “... as the highest achieving of California’s 15 largest school districts” based on an 874 Academic Performance Index score.

But that’s what Shrove and the others want to get away from, the bureaucracy of a large district. In creating a new district of about 10,000 students, they hope to “provide a higher level of local accountability, transparency, educational standards, support for teachers, community representation and fiscal management,” according to an invitation to the Tuesday meeting.

SchoolDigger.com, a website that ranks the state’s school districts based on test scores supplied by the State Dept. of Education, has CUSD ranked No. 109 out of 856. There are six districts in Orange County rated higher: Laguna Beach Unified (No. 31), Los Alamitos Unified (40), Irvine Unified (42), Fountain Valley Elementary (58), Huntington Beach City Elementary (68), and Cypress Elementary (89). The 2014 ranking for CUSD represents a 48-position increase over 2013.

Although she was warned that breaking away from CUSD would take about 10 years, Shrove doesn’t think that’s the case, She cites the case of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. Malibu is about 3.5 years into the process of secession and is apparently aimed toward the final stretch that will deliver an answer.

According to a School District Separation Research memo by San Clemente City Manager James Makshanoff, the last new district created in Orange County took place in 1982 when what is now the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District broke from the Fullerton Joint Union HIgh School District. SchoolDigger.com ranked P-YLUSD (with 25,826 enrollment) as No. 120 on its list of districts; the Fullerton Elementary (13,820 students) and Fullerton High School (with 14,479 students) districts are ranked No. 276 and 287, respectively. In the case of Placentia-Yorba Linda, the new district at half the size seems to have benefited its students.

Shrove said San Clemente would likely have an even easier time than Malibu in its secession efforts because Orange County is smaller than L.A. County, and the political environment is different. Additionally, San Clemente has its own high school, three middle schools and several elementary schools that only serve residents of the city, and the city’s demographics are similar to the CUSD’s as a whole, unlike the demographics of Malibu and Santa Monica, said Shrove.

According to political strategist Lionel Rainey, whose firm is helping parents in a Baton Rouge (LA) district secede, secession “puts the controls in the hands of the parents.”

According to the state, there are nine criteria to establish a new school district:

1. Adequate enrollment
2. Community identity
3. Equitable property and facility division
4. Non-promotion of racial/ethnic discrimination or segregation
5. No increase in state costs
6. No disruption to educational programs or performance
7. No increase in school housing costs
8. Not designed to increase property values
9. No substantial negative impact on district fiscal management or status

One of the first steps for the San Clemente group would be to hire a research company to conduct a feasibility study to ensure it meets all nine criteria.

“We are not considering leaving CUSD because of a temper tantrum the community is having,” Shrove said. “We are considering leaving CUSD because we truly believe this is the best chance we have to get our kids a good education. It’s important to note that within our primary group of organizers, most of us have children who will have graduated before an SCUSD is formed. We are not doing this for our own children. We are doing this for the children of this community.”