New Millennium school site has some history

By Michael Picarella pic@theacorn.com

A developer has plans to build the ninth elementary school in Las Virgenes Unified School District as part of a development at the western end of Parkway Calabasas. New Millennium Homes is building the 550-single-family-home gated community called The Oaks.

Home-developing giant Bald-win Co. created the school project in the early 1990s, according to Las Virgenes Unified School District Deputy Superintendent Donald Zimring.

"Baldwin was very anxious to have the school district provide service to their community," Zimring said. "They wanted to use this as a marketing feature. . . . So with that, we worked with Baldwin developers and they came up with what—at the time—was almost an unheard of offer. They were going to dedicate a school site. That means (they were going to) give it to us virtually for free."

The school district was not in a position to just say no to that, especially in 1991, Zimring said. A new school was needed because current school populations were growing, as was traffic, he said. Land for a new school site was scarce and expensive, he added. LVUSD entered an agreement with Baldwin to build a school at the site in The Oaks—behind gates.

LVUSD officials knew that The Oaks wouldn’t have enough youngsters to justify a school of its own, so officials developed a plan to create access for out-of-the-neighborhood youngsters to enter the school site through the gates.

In 1997, Baldwin went bankrupt.

"We spent several years in bankruptcy court, but the developer agreement held firm," Zimring said. "Then the (school site) developer agreement was transferred to the new owners (New Millennium Homes)."

The new developer and the school district both disliked the idea of a school behind gates, Zimring said. On numerous occasions, he said, various groups made offers to buy out the agreement until the school district found a new school site.

"In each case, the district basically had the same response," Zimring said. "If we can find a suitable alternative, we’d be very interested to moving outside the gates. In the absence of that, though, we don’t feel it’s in the best interest of the school district for this community to do that."

The city, New Millennium Homes and LVUSD have since been working on an agreement to solve the dilemma.