The Saugus Union School District asset management advisory committee at Wednesday’s meeting reviewed and applied slight revisions to the recommendation report draft for the site of Santa Clarita Elementary School.
The next meeting will be a public input meeting on April 30 at Bridgeport Elementary School. The committee members noted they want to make sure the community will come so they can receive their input and apply it to the draft before they move on. The meeting’s time has yet to be posted.
Going through the recommendation report draft, the committee first went through the overview and examined the language that described the process leading up to why the site for Santa Clarita Elementary School was closed and why the committee was formed.
Committee member Kathi Lund made the suggestions to make sure the timeline was chronological and transparent to the community and the district’s governing board.
Suggestions included adding an updated aerial property map, reorganizing paragraphs under the process section of the report to make sure they were following a time order and adding the early documents that were reviewed by the committee earlier on in the process.
“I would like our district to be that type of district,” said Lund. “The straightforward, everyone can see what it is and there’s no concern going forward that something was missing.”
Lund also suggested that the sections in the report draft, “Fiscal Consideration” and “Demographic and Enrollment data,” be added back into the draft to further clarify the committee’s recommendation and transparency.
Committee Chairman James Shea said he had suggested that the sections be taken out because he had felt they were not accurate – particularly the number of students that were still enrolled in 2023 to the end of 2024.
Committee member Kevin Kim said he remembered the discussion about removing the section and it was also taken out because the report would be a reflection of what the committee agreed to. He said if they put it back then it looks like they agreed to the history behind the final days of the school and that was not true for all the members.
“I think if you put it into the report, it means you agree with it, every part of it,” said Kim. “I think when the final thing is made, the board will clearly use that will give their reasoning behind. I’m not necessarily saying that I disagree with all these conclusions because I wasn’t involved in that portion of it, but I think that some of the people who were more involved have multiple disagreements.”
Committee member Al Reano said that if they take the report as it is without the two sections, he believed the committee’s message would come across strongly and that hopefully the community would show up to support them.
“I think we’ve done our best. I really truly believe that each one of us has put in the input and this is better than what I thought, to be honest, from day one when we first met,” said Reano.
Reano made a motion to keep the sections out of the recommendation report, and committee member Bob Aholt seconded the motion. The motion passed to keep out the sections with a 7-2 vote. Committee members Brandon Holtzclaw and Lund voted against the motion.
When editing the recommendation portion of the report, the committee did not have major changes to the items. Their suggestions were to take out or change specific words to clarify their recommendations.
