Conejo Valley Unified School District is facing a budget deficit ranging from $7 million to $11.6 million in 2010-11 and is again forced to consider budget cuts, including school closures, staff layoffs, class size increases, financial concessions from the teachers’ union, reduction/elimination of the adult education and parent education programs at Horizon Hills and more.

Then why, oh why would CVUSD spend $425,000, and possibly up to $820,000, to convert Horizon Hills Preschool into an elementary/ middle school campus for Bridges Charter School?

This is a time when every dollar spent needs to be carefully scrutinized and justified, so to unnecessarily spend bond money converting Horizon Hills Preschool into a K-8 campus while moving existing preschool programs to the closed University Elementary campus, which was built as a middle school, is simply illogical and wasteful.

It makes far more sense to put Bridges Charter School at the closed University school campus because:

1. University currently has 14 vacant classrooms. That’s 80 percent of the campus, which is empty, available, free, idle, not in use, void, not earning lease revenue for the district, and has been all school year.

2. University is a walk-in ready campus, requiring next to nothing in setup costs for CVUSD to ready it for Bridges. The desks and chairs are already stacked in empty classrooms; the playgrounds were built for grades K-8; there’s a covered lunch area, computer infrastructure, a multipurpose room with stage and appropriate bathroom facilities that already exist and aren’t being used.

3. University has a large amount of open land to accommodate Bridges’ projected future growth to 300-plus students, whereas the Horizon Hills site lacks sufficient land for expansion, hence huge remodeling costs to CVUSD.

4. University clearly meets the Prop. 39 definition of “reasonably equivalent,” thus eliminating the possibility of costly litigation.

Please join me in writing to the CVUSD board members and request that they do the right thing, the least disruptive and fiscally prudent action—put Bridges at the closed University Elementary campus.
Jennifer Kerr
Thousand Oaks