 |
|||||
|
Population growth means choice restrictions at Mira Costa
by John Tawa
Student population growth in Manhattan Beach may force the school district to restrict the right of North Redondo Beach students to choose the high school they attend as early as the 2001-2002 school year, the Manhattan Beach School Board decided last Wednesday.
A meeting with the Redondo Beach school district will be held next month to discuss how to restrict school choice among North Redondo residents.
Historically, an agreement between the Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach school districts allowed North Redondo high schoolers to choose whether to attend Mira Costa in Manhattan Beach or Redondo Union in Redondo Beach. Currently, an average of 130 students per class at Mira Costa are from the choice areas in North Redondo, which generally are north of Artesia Boulevard and in the Golden Hills area just south of the high school.
In the past, admitting all North Redondo students who wanted to attend Mira Costa was not a problem, but that may change when the agreement between the district expires before the 2001-2002 school year, due to a burgeoning resident student population.
"We've got to turn them back a little at a time," said school superintendent Jerry Davis. "We full accepted all kids who applied out of the choice area for [the 2000-2001 school year]," a number Davis estimated was 97 students. "Next year, we might not be able to do that."
The school district's decision to restrict choice is based on a recent enrollment analysis by Caldwell Flores Winters, Inc. The analysis shows current enrollment at Mira Costa at 2146 students, of whom 1119 are from Manhattan Beach, an average of 280 per class. The high school's optimum size of 2100 was reached by enrolling 552 kids from Redondo Beach, 258 from Hermosa Beach and 217 from other areas ranging from Los Angeles to Long Beach.
At the Manhattan Beach Middle School, the resident population is 1099, 366 per class or 86 more per class than are presently at the high school. Estimates are that resident population at the high school will continue to grow for the next 10 years at a rate of 51-57 annually. By 2009-2010, the report found an expected resident student population at the high school of approximately 1,685 students.
The population spike in Manhattan Beach runs across all classes, the enrollment report found. Portable classrooms will be required to house the expected surplus of elementary-age children for the next few years until the district opens the transition school as a sixth elementary school, probably in 2003, after all the school sites have been modernized. The Middle School also will drop portables when the very large fourth grade class arrives in two years. ER