VISTA
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Plans for how a shuttered Vista middle school will be used this fall are taking shape, although whether an adult school will be on the campus remains uncertain.
Vista Unified School District trustees have at least temporarily halted a plan by Vista Adult Education officials to hold day and evening classes on a portion of the former Lincoln Middle School campus.
At a school board meeting Thursday, trustee David Hubbard said a “feeding frenzy” has occurred for space at the Lincoln campus on Escondido Avenue since the school closed in January for major repairs.
Trustees have earmarked part of the campus for a new school, Vista Magnet Middle School, which will open in the fall. The board also has agreed to let the city use some classrooms for offices while a civic center is built across the street.
But trustees turned down a request from a new vocational charter high school to open at Lincoln, after some magnet school parents said they worried about allowing the older teens on campus with their middle schoolers.
On Thursday, trustees told adult school Principal Richard Crane they wanted to delay the issue until August, to make sure magnet school parents knew about the proposed adult classes and were comfortable with the idea. They also said Crane should have come to the board sooner with the plan.
Crane proposed holding adult classes on a section of the Lincoln campus that would be blocked off with an 8-foot fence.
The site would be the third major satellite campus of adult education in the district. The other two are at 305 E. Bobier Drive near Vista High School and at 111 W. California Ave. near Vista Academy of Visual and Performing Arts.
Vista Magnet Principal Jose Villarreal said he had been involved in planning for the adult school and had been notifying parents about it.
“We're very comfortable to move forward,” he told the board.
The magnet middle school expects to open with about 200 students and eventually expand to 600.
Crane said about 200 adults would be in the fenced-off classroom area during the day. More adults would attend the program at night so magnet school classrooms would be needed when the younger students would not be on campus, he said. The adult school would equip those classrooms with some computers that the middle schoolers could use during the day, he said.
In other business, the school board approved spending $85,500 to continue providing a shuttle service from the Lincoln site to semirural Rancho Minerva Middle School for the upcoming school year. About 450 students each day used the service from January to May, after Rancho Minerva opened as a replacement for Lincoln. Trustees decided against providing shuttles to two other district middle schools after parents failed to express interest in the idea.
Matthew Rodriguez:
(760) 476-8239; matthew.rodriguez@uniontrib.com
