They say that waiting is the hardest part, and the Orcutt Union and Los Alamos school districts are finding that to be true. Though the California State Board of Education approved an insurance waiver request from the Los Alamos School Board on March 11, the two districts won’t be able to merge until the Santa Barbara County Committee on Reorganization meets and approves the move.
Interim LASD superintendent Ron Barba hopes the committee will be able to move its meeting from mid-July to an earlier date so the merging districts would be able to prepare for the upcoming school year.
The LASD originally thought of blending the districts’ junior high students together since the district would be sending its high school students to Righetti anyway, which voided the option of merging with Santa Ynez School District. Also, Barba believes the OUSD has a great junior high curriculum.
“We didn’t know how the process worked,” Barba said. “We found out around December that we needed to send a waiver to the state board. We were realizing dates were upon us.”
The districts were cutting the deadlines so close that members of the LASD school board were running applications to state offices the day after Christmas, Barba added.
The blurring speed at which two school districts are running isn’t due to procrastination, but rather to the fact that Barba believes it would be dangerous to allow LASD to live fiscally independent for another year.
The district’s only school, Olga Reed Elementary, is faced with declining enrollment, and the district hasn’t been able to buy textbooks lately. But once the merge happens, the future of Olga Reed will be in the hands of the OUSD.
One option Barba offers for the future of LASD’s school is to “branch out and fill it up as a charter school.”
This article appears in Apr 7-14, 2011.