It was supposed to be the final meeting for the volunteer committee that's been studying which schools in Ventura might be closed next year.
But after three hours on Sept. 17 — and after hearing from scores of parents, teachers and students dedicated to saving their schools — the committee hadn't narrowed its list of recommended potential closures at all. In fact, it had expanded it, adding back some schools that it had previously decided it would not recommend closing.
The group will hold at least one more meeting, and perhaps two, before it turns the matter over to the Ventura County Unified School District Board of Trustees for a decision. The committee's job is to come up with a ranked list of which schools would be the best choices to close;
the board will then decide how many schools, and which schools, it wants to close.
The 23-member School Closures Advisory Committee has been meeting monthly since March, deciding on the criteria it will use and gathering data on the district's schools. In August, it began to discuss which of the district's 17 elementary schools it would recommend for closure, and that discussion continued on Sept. 17. The committee has not yet begun to debate which high schools and middle schools would be the best choices to close.
The next meeting has not been scheduled yet but it could come later this month or in October. The committee should be done with its work and ready to give its recommendations to the board by the end of October, said Peggy Maryanski, a retired teacher who chairs the School Closures Advisory Committee. She said she thinks it's very likely that the committee will need more than one additional meeting.
The committee has, so far, eliminated four elementary schools from consideration, which means it won't recommend closing them. Those schools are Montalvo, Sunset, Citrus Glen and Loma Vista elementary schools.
During its August meeting, the committee had also decided to eliminate E.P Foster, Lemon Grove and Portola elementary schools. But on Sept. 17, it put those three schools back into the mix of potential closures, which means there are 13 elementary schools that might be recommended for 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, including all four middle schools.
Why are schools closing?
The district is planning to close schools because it has experienced decades of declining student enrollment and has had persistent budget deficits in recent years.
Ventura Unified had about 14,000 students at the start of the 2025-26 school year, down 19% from 2014, according to statistics kept by the California Department of Education. Some schools in Ventura have lost almost half of their enrollment in that time.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 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.
Fighting to save their schools
The Sept. 17 meeting drew a much larger crowd than any of the committee's previous meetings. About 150 people crowded into the Wright Event Center at Ventura College, and about 20 of made formal public comments. The committee has also received about 200 emails recently from people who want to give their input, Maryanski said.
Most of the people who attended the meeting were supporters of keeping one of a few elementary schools open: Sheridan Way, Lincoln and Will Rogers. They held homemade signs, spoke in defense of their schools and cheered and jeered the committee when it seemed things were, or weren't, going their way.
"We are a community," said Sabrina Clifford, a student at Will Rogers Elementary School in midtown Ventura. "We are one and should not be divided. We are better together."
Felix Rodriguez, a parent and former student at Sheridan Way, said it would be cruel to close a school where almost 95% of the students are classified by the state as "socioeconomically disadvantaged" and more than 60% are learning English as a second language.
"A lot of parents have two or three jobs," Rodriguez said. "The students walk to school and the students come from broken homes. If you take their home, which is their school, they're going to be further disadvantaged."
Members of the committee said they wanted to keep the discussion focused on objective criteria, such as the projected enrollment of each school and the amount of money the district could save by closing it. But many said they were also considering less quantitative factors, such as the need to avoid creating "school deserts," or large parts of town with no elementary schools.
Maryanski told the crowd that everyone was feeling "anticipatory grief" over the process.
"Know that members of the committee feel it too," she said. "There is no one that sat here, rubbed their hands together and said, 'Oh, goodie, I get to close schools.' "
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 school closures take center stage
