Acton Agua Dulce Unified School District Committee Data

Draft to be acted on at the 9-20-04 Committee meeting

Report of the Surplus Property Committee Of the Acton- Agua Dulce Unified School District

Members:

Ron Bird, Charles Brink, Sheila Cook *, Max Duran, Karen Glos *, Michael Hughes, Bryan Marr, Leona Sexton *, Gar Smith, Tracey Wegmann *, Jeannie Wright *

* submitted letter of resignation and not replaced by board

September 20, 2004

The Surplus Property Committee

The Surplus Property Committee of the Acton-Agua Dulce Unified School District is a group of community members interested in providing recommendations to the Board of Trustees relative to the use of surplus property. These members were appointed by the School board consistent towith education code section 17387, operate under the Brown Act and have met publicly under the Brown Act together to discuss the legal obligations of the committee,. and have provided comments on each issue in the attached report.

17390. The school district advisory committee shall do all of the following:

(a). Review the projected student enrollment and other data as provided by the district to determine the amount of surplus space and real property.

(b) Establish a priority list of use of surplus and real property that will be acceptable to the community.

(c) Circulate through the attendance area the availability of surplus space and real property.

(d) Make a final determination of limits of tolerance for the use of surplus space and real property.

(e) Forward to the district governing board a report recommending uses for surplus space and real property.

(a) Review the projected student enrollment and other data as provided by the district to determine the amount of surplus space and real property.

Anticipated Site Enrollments 2004-2005

5-Year Enrollment Projections (from July 2004 administration Estimates)

Analysis of Enrollment Projections

Although K-8 enrollments are continuing to decline, this number has been directly offset by an enrollment increase at the high school level. Looking at the five year projections provided by the district in July, overall enrollment was predicted to decline until a bottom is reached in 2006-7 and then start rising in subsequent years.

Committee members noted that the district took in a record amount in developer fees in the 2003-4 year and some speculate believe that this development was a major factor in initial 2004-5 enrollment numbers being larger than anticipated and may add enrollment within all of these homes are completed..

The Committee contacted Los Angeles County Regional Planning to help determine what future development is in the pipeline over the next five years. They estimate that roughly 2000-3000 new housing units exists in the approved and pending approval tract maps that they have on file in the Acton – Agua Dulce School District.

Committee members also noted that the demographics of the district have changed over the past ten years and are expected to continue to change over the next five years. The price of residential housing has increased dramatically, thus resulting in a tendency for the new residents to arrive in the district with older aged students. This tendency is very much reflected in last year’s district enrollment numbers by grade (see the attachment A). Last year Kindergarten enrollment was 114 students and increased in each subsequent grade until grade 8, which had an enrollment of 212 students.

It was also noted that a significant volatility exists for enrollments to increase or decrease quickly due to the number of students living within the district that are either home schooled or attend schools outside the district.

Overall this leaves the committee with many uncertainty as what the actual enrollment will in fact be five years from now. Due to this uncertainty, the committee assumed that overall enrollments would at least remain approximately the same over the next five years. This is consistent with the July 2004 administrations estimates.

Teaching Station Allocation

Following the move of 3 portables each to High Desert and Meadowlark, the following schools expect to have two classrooms each provided for pull-out programs such as music, adaptive P.E., TUPE, Title I remediation, etc. The District does not consider these properties "Surplus Property" because they are used consistently for instructional purposes. We allocate 2 additional rooms per site for this purpose on a regular basis.

The committee concurs with this objective and adds that additional rooms should be planned for to allow for unanticipated enrollment growth or other contingencies that require a classroom to be temporarily relocated. Such contingencies might include having a spare room to temporarily replace room that: has a severely leaking roof or heat, electric or AC problems. This school year saw unanticipated enrollment growth on most campuses, which has resulted in some class sizes larger than desired or legally allowed. The lack of spare rooms has hampered the district’s ability to address these class sizes.

The following table depicts the district’s current classroom configuration, as it currently exists, without any relocatables yet moved from the Acton campus to other campuses in the district.

Assumptions:

Acton is listed as having 26 classrooms with two allocated for alternate education and two for music/conferences leaving 22 rooms available including the desired two room buffer. An additional 4-5 relocatable rooms exist on this campus, but are very old and their status for classroom use is questionable. We therefore did not include in these in the inventory.

The District will continue to operate its central offices on the property located at 32248 Crown Valley Road. In addition, two Alternative Education classrooms, and two conference / music rooms will be retained by the District.

If class size reduction for grades K and 3 is restored, about four additional rooms will be required. This assumes Agua Dulce kindergarten will revert back to one-half day. If not one additional room is required. Two rooms would be needed to implement the Morgan-Hart grade 9 class size reduction, if the district chooses to do so.

This chart does not take into account overcrowding of some classrooms. Additional rooms may be needed to relieve these overcrowded classes, thus reducing net surplus rooms. On the other hand should a smaller desired room buffer be deemed adequate, the net surplus may increase.

The Committee has not reviewed where the district has shifted students between campuses and has evaluated to total teaching stations without regard to the current student assignments or portable locations.

Conclusions under section 17390 (a)

Assuming the district restores class size reduction (as they publicly stated) in subsequent years, maintaining an adequate number of buffer rooms, keeping class sizes at or below district proposed maximums and assuming that enrollment numbers remain constant, then we have determined that only four surplus classrooms exist district-wide..

The Surplus Property Committee therefore finds no specific site is surplus. and only four classrooms within the district are surplus . We recommend to the Board of Trustees that these rooms be made available for short-term lease.

Due to a possible future increase in student enrollment, the committee recommends that any property lease not exceeding one year in length, and that the property have the availability to be returned for district use at the end of each school year. Therefore, it is also our recommendation that any no site not be physically altered so substantially as to preclude it from a fairly easy return to district use.

(b). Establish a priority list of use of surplus and real property that will be acceptable to the community.

It is understood that preschool and special education are given legal priority in the leasing of school property.

During the public hearing of May 27, 2004 the following interests were expressed by the public pertaining to the use of the any surplus property.

Senior Center

Community Center

Teen Center

After School Programs / Before School Programs

Boys and Girls Club

Home School Program / Independent Study

Adult Education

Community College classes

Childcare Facility / Preschool

Trade School / ROP

ITT Tech Institute

Future Farmers / 4H

The Community expressed that they do not wish to have the following:

Rehab Centers

Out-of-district continuation schools

Conclusions under section 17390 (b)

The Surplus Property Committee, having heard these recommendations from the public, and with the realization that the best use of our facilities is to educate our local students, establishes the following priority list for the use of this property:

1st Priority: Use Consider using the facility as a home school center. This would bring students back to our district that are currently being home schooled, and would thereby increase our ADA and enrollment.

2nd Priority: Consider using Use of the facility for Adult Education. It must be noted, however, that there is limited parking on the Acton School site. The Surplus Property Committee strongly urges the District to take this in to account when leasing to providers of Adult Education. We encourage the District to limit the Adult Ed classes based on available parking facilities.

3rd priority: Consider using Use of the facility as a Community Center, with the understanding that community functions and clubs existing on the campus on a regular basis would need to generate revenue for the District in some manner.

The committee is prepared to complete sections C to F of the code now that is has completed sections a and b.

Additional recommendations to the governing board.

It would have been extremely useful if an updated 10 Year Master Plan (the enrollment projection portion particularly) and the facilities need analyses done over the last 10 years would have and specifically for the 3 proposed bonds had been available for the committee as a basis to project future facilities needs. In addition, a recent Developer Fee Justification report would also have been very beneficial.

We therefore recommend that in the future the district maintain updated copies of these vital documents.

Final Note

Several assumptions were made in this report regarding future enrollment patterns. If additional enrollment projection data becomes available, the Surplus Property Committee would be happy to re

view our findings based on that additional informationcan reach a more definitive decision.

Respectfully submitted,

Ron Bird ____________________________

Charles Brink ____________________________

Max Duran ____________________________

Michael Hughes ____________________________

Bryan Marr ____________________________

Gar Smith ____________________________

AAD District Enrollment-1993-2003-Reported from October CBEDS

enrollment peeks highlighted

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