At the first of two public meetings, Murrieta school officials shared three proposed maps that would redraw attendance lines for elementary, middle and high schools.
Revising school attendance boundaries is part of an process that began in 2023 but officials hope it will help alleviate crowding and prepare for planned new homes that will bring more students into the Murrieta Valley Unified School District.
RELATED: Murrieta Valley schools look to fight crowding by redrawing campus boundaries
Christina Guzman, a Murrieta schools alum and parent of an 8-year-old daughter in the district, said at the Tuesday, Dec. 10, session that she is concerned about how planned apartments would be added into the district.
In June 2023, the Murrieta City Council approved a housing plan that included 3,043 new housing units. More than 1,000 of those apartments are classified as affordable housing.
Guzman said that she was concerned that the boundaries may split the schools by socioeconomic class, something she said would “take away from the heart of Murrieta.”
“Being born and raised in Murrieta, we have a lot of diversity, and everyone makes you feel extremely welcome,” Guzman said. “Whether you go to a business or a community event, you’re always welcomed but if we start splitting it up and saturating it in little sections, it just takes away from Murrieta.”
Guzman, who will be moving into the new apartments, said that all three plans would send her daughter to a different school. The third option is the most fair, she said, because it splits up the student population in the new apartments and condominiums evenly, particularly for elementary and middle schools.
Initially, Murrieta school officials planned to place a bond on the ballot and to buy and build a new school on the west side of the city to address crowding. Murrieta school board member Nancy Young has said redrawing boundaries would be necessary if voters did not pass a bond measure to build that campus.
In August, the board voted 3-2 against letting voters decide on a $200 million bond in November. Trustees Paul Diffley, Linda Lunn and Young voted to put the measure forward. But members Nick Pardue and Julie Vandegrift voted no. The proposal failed because four of five board members needed to agree in order to place the measure on the ballot.
Murrieta parent Markela Parsons said that she was disappointed when the board decided against pursing the bond measure.
“I would have preferred that our community voted on it, but now we’re here, so we don’t get a new school for a while, and that’s unfortunate,” Parsons said.
Parsons said she is concerned about the way that some proposed maps divide neighborhoods. Her worry is not about the schools or the teachers but about the relationships that families build with their schools and neighborhoods.
“If my kids go to school but three or four blocks over, their best friend has to go to a different school, that is going to fracture some kiddos’ lives, and that’s unfortunate,” Parsons said. “It’s about building community and building trust within the community and believing in the systems that are currently in place well.”
Parent Nicole Cheslar said that walkability for students to and from school is key for her. Some maps would split some neighborhoods in way that means kids would end up walking to a school that is farther away when there is one closer.
“That’s real tough, because not everybody has transportation in the form of a vehicle, and walkability is important,” Cheslar said.
Cheslar and Parsons said they believe the second map has the most even breakdown of the student population.
At a special July 31 meeting, the Murrieta school board heard from its consultant, Woolpert, about the possibility of redrawing school lines to accommodate more students at elementary, middle and high schools.
Karen Jackson, a Woolpert representative, said Murrieta Elementary School is expected to be crowded in the next two years at 105% capacity and would be at 168% capacity in the next 10 years if the district kept its current school boundary layout.
During that meeting, Jackson said schools should be in the 80-90% range of usage to allow for flexibility and room for special education.
Christi Pascual, a grandparent in the district, said the district has changed since her move to Murrieta in the early 2000s. With that change, she said, the district needs to find ways to fit everyone.
Pascual is a former Murrieta teacher and parent. Her four children went through the district and the youngest recently graduated. With her experience in Murrieta schools, Pascual said she knows what goes into such decisions and that many people, like her, bought their homes with a specific school in mind. Pascual said she understands that some could be upset by the change.
“I know that these decisions are hard to make,” Pascual said. “But there are schools right now that are overloaded in this district. You have to change those boundaries just a little bit, because you can’t have so many kids in a school. I mean, you don’t want to have a bunch of portables.”
Superintendent Ward Andrus said the district hopes to make it a speedy process and to address any potential impacts on families.
“What I would tell the community, and told everyone — I’ve told my trustees, I told the new trustees — the sooner the school board adopts the new boundaries, the sooner we can implement with the least impact to families,” Andrus said.
The longer the district waits, the more impacted the schools will get, he said, and the harder it will be to accommodate families hoping to stay at their current campuses.
“If we do it earlier, it can be gradual, and it can be just a handful of families, or this case, hundreds of families, not thousands of families,” Andrus said.
The district’s website lays out some of its efforts to grapple with crowding, which include verifying students’ addresses, limiting transfers and closing some schools to transfers. Four schools are closed to transfer students in the current school year.
A second public meeting was set for Wednesday, Dec. 11. A timeline posted in November states that a fourth committee meeting is set for Jan. 13 to review the community’s feedback and make adjustments. The board could hear a final report Feb. 13.
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