Tustin, CA – For the past six months, the Tustin Unified School District has attempted to settle all pending disputes with the City of Tustin, and the City has refused to discuss a settlement. Instead of trying to find a way to minimize the expense of litigation to Tustin’s taxpayers through settlement, the City has filed another lawsuit – its second – against the District, which is solely designed to interfere with the District’s continuing efforts to construct and renovate Tustin’s schools.

“This needless and costly lawsuit is hardly conducive to promoting a constructive dialogue between the City and the District,” said TUSD Board President Lynn Davis. “Instead of another confrontational tactic by the City, we should be looking for ways to work together, resolve our differences and do what’s right for kids, parents and taxpayers.”

The City’s latest lawsuit against the District relates to the temporary use of Heritage Elementary School located on the former Tustin marine base (Tustin Legacy). For the past several years, residential home development at Tustin Legacy has stopped almost completely because of the historic recession and a controversial dispute between the City and its master developer.

Despite the lack of development at Tustin Legacy, the District was nevertheless required to proceed with construction of Heritage School or else it would have to return the free land it had obtained from the U.S. Department of Education. The District also took advantage of construction costs and savings of 15 to 20 percent on the project.

Currently, there are about 78 students in kindergarten through fifth-grade who live in the attendance area of Columbus Square and are attending primarily Benson and Marjorie Veeh elementary schools. Heritage will be used as an elementary school as soon as there are enough students to fulfill the typical start-up enrollment for a K-5 school of approximately 300-350 students with anticipated growth in the future to the average District range of 550-600.

“Simply put, spending the excessive cost to open the base school for so few students would have meant larger class sizes and fewer resources for every other child in our district,” Davis said. “Even the children at Heritage would have been hurt by our need to combine grades and limit their educational options. Opening an elementary school now is just not prudent.”

Rather than have Heritage School remain vacant, unused and subject to the risk of vandalism, the District has decided to use Heritage to house students and staff from Hillview and Sycamore high schools and 15 TUSD administrative personnel on a temporary basis. This decision will allow the District to perform much needed renovations to Hillview at a lower cost to taxpayers because no temporary classrooms will be needed to house the students and staff during construction. The District will also temporarily use Sycamore classrooms for interim housing of Tustin High School students. Assuming there are sufficient students generated from development at Tustin Legacy, Heritage School will then be used as an elementary school as originally planned.

“It is important to note that we are using the school solely for educational purposes and the relocation of these programs are alternative uses of the facility on an interim basis,” Davis said.

Instead of acknowledging the facts surrounding the troubled development at Tustin Legacy, the City has decided to spend more taxpayer money on an expensive lawsuit to challenge the District’s temporary use of Heritage School. The City claims the District failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it did not consider some minor parking and traffic issues associated with the temporary use. The City is seeking an injunction to stop the District from using Heritage School at all.

The temporary use of Heritage School is exempt from the requirements imposed by CEQA. The District nevertheless responded to all the issues the City had raised before the City filed its lawsuit. The District asked the City not to file the lawsuit, and instead “work together” to resolve any remaining concerns of the City. The City ignored the District’s response and quickly filed a lawsuit to interfere with the District’s operation of its schools.

Even though Heritage is exempt from CEQA compliance and no further environmental analysis was required, the District took additional steps and had an outside independent source complete a traffic report and an initial study out of an abundance of caution to verify the correctness of, and to provide further technical analysis of the facts supporting the notice of exemption. The findings indicated that the project would have “no significant impact” to the community.

“The City’s latest lawsuit is another disappointing turn for the District and for Tustin’s taxpayers,” Davis said. “Nevertheless, the District remains committed to resolving all disputes with the City, and welcomes an open dialogue with City officials to achieve that goal.”

An environmental analysis of the initial study and other documents are posted on the TUSD Web site at www.tustin.k12.ca.us. The full report is available at the District Office, 300 South C St., Tustin. For more information, contact the TUSD Communications Office at (714) 730-7339.