It seems that everywhere I turn I see recently closed businesses that have been replaced by dollar stores.

These discount stores appear to be the only businesses still flourishing.

Clearly, we’re all caught in poor economic times suffering from this budget crisis, our local school district included.

So I ask myself, if Conejo Valley Unified School District is reeling from such devastating cuts, why in the world spend additional monies, to the tune of $820,000, to reconstruct a preschool-appropriate campus— Horizon Hills—to serve a charter school, educating kindergarten through eighth-graders?

This plan doesn’t make sense when University Elementary sits with 14 empty classrooms, gathering cobwebs.

With so many empty classrooms in neighborhood schools, why not utilize the extra space for localized preschool classes and place Bridges K-8 on a campus more suitable for its students? According to CVUSD figures, Acacia is 39 percent unoccupied, Glenwood is 24 percent unoccupied, Park Oaks is 48 percent unoccupied, Walnut is 34 percent unoccupied, Madrona is 35 percent unoccupied, Cypress is 24 percent unoccupied and Maple is 34 percent unoccupied. Numerous elementary-campus-based preschool programs would be a much better way for the district to grow its preschool program and make this option most accessible and convenient for families.

The neighborhoods surrounding University need that campus brought back to life now. Children need to use those playgrounds now, not five years from now, as the district proposes.

A centralized preschool may never develop to the extent CVUSD envisions, especially if we look at its City Center preschool program, which is nowhere near capacity. Money is too tight to be placing bets on what might happen in the future.

If CVUSD is into gambling, I urge the district to please take its money to Las Vegas but to leave mine here, where it can help my neighborhood kids. By the same token, I also don’t want CVUSD wasting my taxpayer money on retrofitting a preschool only to then reassign the campus to a K-8 school.

The district should exercise frugality and use what we already have: place Bridges at the empty University elementary campus.
Hilda Salas
Thousand Oaks