BACK TO SCHOOL—Eighth-grader Milaud Miremadi travels from station to station to register for classes at Medea Creek Middle School while his mother Peymaneh and sister Neeka look on. STEPHANIE BERTHOLDO/Acorn Newspapers Despite dwindling enrollment and shrinking budgets at school districts throughout the region, Oak Park Unified School District is trending in the opposite direction.

Oak Park schools opened yesterday with a record enrollment of 4,223 students. Thirty-four percent of this year’s enrollment is made up of out-of-town children who transferred under the state District of Choice program.

The District of Choice (DOC) program allows students from outside district boundaries to attend Oak Park schools on permit without being released from their home districts first.

According to Superintendent Tony Knight, the 1,440 transfer students are traveling from Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Malibu and the San Fernando Valley. Some students will make the trek from Burbank and Beverly Hills.

The cap for DOC students is 35 percent of total enrollment.

Additional teachers have been hired to meet the increased enrollment, Knight said.

“Our enrollment at this moment is 4223, about 27 short of our projection, but this will certainly change (after school starts),” Knight said.

The cap for DOC students does not include children of OPUSD staff members or students from out of the district who attend Oak View High School or Oak View Independent School.

To reduce traffic, the district has contracted with the Southwinds Transportation bus company to take out-of-area students to and from school. Transfer students will be required to pay for the bus service—about $1,200 per year per student, according to Martin Klauss, assistant superintendent of business services. Up to 200 families are expected to use the service, which will start in the second week of school.

New fire alarms have been installed at all Oak Park schools.

Brookside Elementary and Medea Creek Middle schools have been repainted.

Planning for a new multipurpose room at Brookside will begin in the fall, but the work will not begin until summer 2012.

The playground at Oak Hills Elementary School has been resurfaced, and a parking lot and kindergarten yard are expected to be repaved in 2012.

A fix for drainage problems at Oak Hills has been completed. According to Peter Kristensen, co-chair of the district’s facility planning committee, the school had experienced a “never-ending cycle of flooding,” but a new drainage system has solved the problem.

Klauss said in an email that adequate drainage was not initially provided in the playground area adjacent to classrooms.

“Consequently, in a heavy rain, it was not uncommon for water to back up next to the building, flowing under doorways,” Klauss said. “Over the last few years, approximately $30,000, covered by insurance, has been spent to repair damage to books, carpets, cabinets and for mold remediation.” He said drains have been added to the playground to solve the problem permanently.

Security cameras have been installed at Medea Creek Middle School to address safety and vandalism concerns, Klauss said. Deteriorating exterior doors were replaced on 25 classrooms.

New artificial turf has been installed at Oak Park High School’s lower field. Wheelchair access ramps must be added to the area to meet American Disability Act requirements, Kristensen said.

Assistant Principal Stewart McGugan said the cost of the turf field was borne by Real So Cal Soccer Club in exchange for usage of the field. A ribbon-cutting will take place at 7 p.m. Fri., Sept. 9 during the school’s first home game.

Some new landscaping has been added to the high school. The original landscaping was destroyed in summer 2010 when six mobile classrooms were trucked through the plants on the way to the south end of the campus. Klauss said the last of the Measure R funds paid for ironwood trees, oak trees and a variety of shrubs.

Knight said one counselor, a psychologist and 13 teachers have been hired, including two math teachers at Oak Park High and four special education teachers.

Oak Park schools have added classes. At Oak Park High, new offerings are anatomy, which is a college prep science course; physiology; and Advanced Placement music theory, 3-D design and 2-D design.

New electives at Medea Creek Middle School are introduction to film, Chinese I and music appreciation.

Teachers received professional guidance on how to teach the Holocaust. The “Echoes and Reflections” program, a multimedia curriculum on the Holocaust, was developed through a partnership between the Anti-Defamation League; the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education; and Yad Vashem, a Holocaust research organization.