Neighbors Protest Plan to Raze School

VENTURA — Fear that the school district may sell the shuttered Washington Elementary School to make room for up to 54 additional residences in a quiet midtown neighborhood has kindled a local campaign to preserve the 71-year-old institution.

As the Ventura Unified School District searches for ways to create more classroom space for the city’s growing student population, a recent report recommends selling the more than five-acre Washington Elementary site on MacMillan Avenue to help raise the needed money.

But those living in the neighborhood’s mostly 1920s-era homes worry that a new development of single family homes on smaller lots, as suggested in a report, would clog the area’s narrow streets with cars and forever banish the calm in one of Ventura’s oldest communities.

“You can’t tell me that putting that many homes here wouldn’t destroy the character of the neighborhood,” said Chrisman Avenue resident Helen Bogue, 74, standing in front of the entrance to the beige, Spanish-style stucco building with the art deco lettering intact reading “Washington School.”

Since problems with the school’s structural foundation prompted the district to close it 13 years ago, vandals and the elements have left the school with broken windows, a trashed interior and peeling paint.

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Wanting to see the building, located about a block southwest of Main Street, refurbished and used again as a school or possibly a community center, Bogue and about 60 other residents have formed a citizens group called Save our School that has distributed fliers and held meetings to support the campus.

“We would like to save it,” said Bogue, as she crossed the school’s rutted blacktop and walked along the sunbaked field behind the facility. “In Ventura, once something is more than 20 years old, people figure it is too old and they want to tear it down. We think this school is like a little treasure.”

Joseph Richards, assistant superintendent for business services, said the district has not made any decisions to raze the school and sell the property.

Nevertheless, Richards said the school is not structurally sound in the event of an earthquake--state architects have told the district that the building is unsafe--and that the district could probably not afford to refurbish it.

“That will be very, very difficult to do,” said Richards, adding that the district would not take any action without first holding public hearings. “If we know that we need a school there, we will determine if it is possible to rehabilitate it. And if not, we will look at the possibility of knocking it down and starting anew.”

In July, the district formed a 24-member panel to come up with proposals for accommodating Ventura’s burgeoning student population.

Ventura’s elementary schools are now on average 98% full, and the panel of city representatives, district officials, parents and other civic leaders also must consider what to do with the district’s three closed schools: Avenue, Santa Ana in Oak View and Washington.

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Before the committee was formed, school officials received the report--prepared by Enshallah Inc., a San Jose consulting company, and the Los Angeles law firm Bergman and Wedner Inc.--on how to use district facilities.

What has alarmed residents near Washington is a passage in the report that calls selling Washington the best option for the site, predicting the district could raise more than $1.6 million from a sale.

“Developers would be very interested in the site for entry-level, single-family detached homes and a ready market would be available,” said the report, which suggested a development with 10 to 12 homes per acre.

But the 32-page report also warns that developers would have to contend with the city’s residential growth management plans that could make it difficult to receive the necessary approvals.

While the school’s main building was constructed in 1925, a wooden bungalow that now houses the California Indian Education Center was built in 1929 and the school’s auditorium went up in 1941.

Members of Save our School filed into a recent meeting of the panel studying long-range school building needs to urge the advisors to spare the old school.

“Basically, we consider the school to be a historic resource,” said Jenny Salazar, who lives on San Nicholas Street. “The stores on Main Street, the school and the houses around it are like a slice of Ventura in the 1920s. When you tear a historic building down, you cannot replace it.”