The committee studying which schools to close in Ventura is nearing the end of its work and will meet again on Sept. 17 to discuss its list of potential closures.
The Ventura Unified School District is planning to close one or more schools due to decades of declining student enrollment.
The district’s Board of Trustees appointed a committee of 23 teachers, parents, students, business leaders and other Ventura residents to make recommendations to the board on which schools would be the best choices to close, and that committee has been holding public meetings every month since March.
The next meeting will be Sept. 17 at 5:30 p.m. at the Wright Event Center at Ventura College. District officials chose the larger venue because they expect a bigger
public turnout than previous meetings.
At its last meeting, on Aug. 20, the committee narrowed its task a bit by eliminating seven of the district’s 17 elementary schools from recommended closure. The seven schools that the committee has decided it won’t recommend closing are: Citrus Glen, E.P. Foster, Lemon Grove, Montalvo, Portola and Sunset.
On Sept. 17, the committee will work on a ranked list of the remaining 10 elementary schools and will also begin to discuss ranking the district’s high schools and middle schools for potential closure.
The district has stated that it will not close either of its two largest high schools, Ventura High School and Buena High School. All of the other schools will be on the table, and the board could decide to close schools that the advisory committee does not recommend.
The Sept. 17 meeting is the last scheduled committee meeting, but the committee could decide to hold another meeting if it does not finish its work. After its final meeting, it will issue a report with its recommendations to the Board of Trustees, which will then make the final decision about school closures. Closures would take effect at the start of the 2027-28 school year.
Why is Ventura Unified talking about closing schools?
The district is planning to close schools because it has fewer students than it has had in decades, and the numbers are almost certain to keep falling.
The district had about 14,000 students at the start of the 2025-26 school year, which is 19% less than its enrollment in 2014, according to statistics kept by the California Department of Education. Most school districts in Ventura County are shrinking, but Ventura's is shrinking faster than most; countywide, public school enrollment was down about 15% from 2014 to 2025.
In Ventura, some schools are shrinking much faster than others. For example, at Sheridan Way Elementary, located off of Ventura Avenue on the west end of the city, the student population declined by 45% from 2014 to 2025. Some schools aren't shrinking at all; Pierpont Elementary had 11% more students in 2025 than in 2014.
By 2031, if no schools are closed, 17 of the district's 26 schools will be below 70% of the enrollment capacity they were built for, according to research prepared for the advisory committee by a consultant to the district.
Ventura Unified officials believe they could potentially save millions of dollars a year by closing schools they don't need and moving their students to other schools. According to a report from the consultant to the advisory committee, the annual savings for closing elementary schools would range from about $800,000 for Pierpont Elementary to a little over $1.1 million for the Academy of Technology & Leadership at Saticoy or ATLAS.
Closing any of the district's four middle schools would save between $2.2 million and $2.5 million per year. Closing Foothill Technology High School would save about $3 million per year and closing Pacific High, the district's continuation high school, would save about $1.9 million.
The district's general fund budget is about $260 million for the current school year. And money is tight. The district had to make cuts and lay off employees this year and last year.
Which schools might be closed?
The School Closures Advisory Committee is considering the projected savings of closing each school, the enrollment projections, the physical condition of the schools, the diversity of the student body, student test scores and other factors. The district's consultant prepared a report for the Aug. 20 committee meeting giving each elementary school a numeric score on 24 different criteria.
The school with the highest overall score – the one with the most factors pointing toward closure – was Sheridan Way, followed by Will Rogers Elementary. The elementary schools with the lowest scores were Mound and Pierpont, which means they would be least likely to be recommended for closure.
But the committee will not necessarily follow the numeric scores. Mound Elementary, for example, was discussed by some committee members as a good choice to close because it is a magnet school that draws students from all over the district, so closing it would not deprive a neighborhood of its local school. Other committee members said it might be best to close schools that are geographically close to other schools.
"What we're trying to do here is give you the data in different ways to organize it for you," said Brianna Garcia, the district's consultant to the committee. "That shouldn't mean, 'OK, we've got the top scores, these are the ones we're closing. Our work here is done.' Because there are other things that should be taken into consideration as you make this decision."
During the Aug. 20 meeting, Ashley Pope, a parent in the district, urged the committee not to shy away from closing multiple schools, if that will allow the district to offer a better education to its students.
"Please make the difficult recommendation," she said. "If we close too few schools we may be sitting here doing this all over again in five or 10 years.”
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation's Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Ventura Unified schools up for closure to narrow after meeting
