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Health & Fitness

Blog: Fountainwood Issues

School expansions at Sumac/Maripos site have had a direct negative impact on Fountainwood neighborhood and an indirect negative impact on Kanan Road intersections.

Living across from an elementary school can be a bit tricky. You might encounter some traffic and run into a parent or two parking in front of your house. You might say “Hello” or “Good Morning,”and you move on with your day. That is not the case if you live across the Sumac/Mariposa School site.

More often than not you’ll have a car parked completely blocking your driveway and with no one in the car. You won’t be able to leave for work or maybe get to your doctor’s appointment on time because of the “courteous” parent that blocked your driveway. But as if blocking your entire driveway was not enough, when you approach the “considerate” parent, they nonchalantly flip you off or cuss you out in front of their young children. 

Then there are those people that just don’t block your driveway but hit your cars. When those lovely parents are asked not to hit cars, their response is “Go F%$# yourself!” The best part is when the school district officials say,“Well, we just can’t control how parents behave and you have to keep in mind that living across from a school is always challenging.” I say NO, living across from a school does NOT mean you have to be subjected to being cussed at or having your personal property damaged. 

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However, this is only the tip of the iceberg, the school district is perfectly aware of the current traffic issues that the school site has and its unsafe ramifications. None the less, the district has made the decision to continue to expand one of the schools on the site. The school, Mariposa is part of the LVUSD and has some 300-400 students of which 45 percent are not from within the school district.

Now, the school is lauded for the alternative teaching methods which give children the opportunity to freely learn outside of the traditional classroom setting. But there are several confusing issues at hand. First, one of the district officials has been quoted several times saying that the Sumac/Mariposa school site is approved to hold 1000 students. However, we have requested the written copy of such approval without any success and that may be because the document is around 30 years old and probably has been archived in some storage facility.

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But if that is why we can’t be provided with a copy, then it proves that such approval is outdated, because 30 years ago or even just 20 years ago, most families that had children attending Sumac where ALL community students attended and most of them walked to school.

In 2013, the reality of where the children are coming from is entirely different. If there is a 45 percent student population in the Mariposa School commuting to school, then there are at least 100 students just from Mariposa having to be driven to school. That’s 100 vehicles and that just one of the two schools with a commuting population. However, the district would have the Foutainwood neighborhood believe that 300 more children at that site would not add to the negative traffic impact we already experience. 

Furthermore, this problem is not isolated to Fountainwood. Adding more students to the Sumac/Mariposa site also impacts Kanan Road, which is the main artery of transportation in and out of the Agoura Hills/Oak Park area. Kanan Road is so impacted as is stands that there is gridlock every morning between 8 and 8:45 a.m and 3 to 3:45 p.m. Adding another 300 vehicles to the mix is DEFINITELY going to impact more than just Fountainwood. 

Additionally, there are other elements of the expansion that do not seem to add up. For example, Mariposa was given the approval for four more bungalows (fabricated trailers) to be added for their school, while Sumac Elementary had been told that their Journey’s (pre-kindergarten) Program would have to be moved to another school because there was lack of classroom space. I’ve also found out that because of the two schools existing on the site, there is a struggle to share space such as the MPR (Multi Purpose Room) for events; the Physical Therapist services students in Sumac’s hallways and the school psychologist office is a converted closet. How is it that Mariposa can get these classrooms and Sumac is in desperate need of additional space to service their students? 

The issues don’t stop there. Mariposa is not a Charter School and therefore it is part of LVUSD, which would typically mean that the student ratio would have to match that of the rest of the district, but that’s not the case. Their classrooms are much smaller than the typical LVUSD class. How is that possible?

There are many neighbors that want answers to all of these questions and we have ONE person trying to obtain information from the district and has offered her time to do the research and copying of any materials needed to support the references that school and board officials have cited. Yet, she has been passed from one person to another and at one point told that “too many people” have requested the same documents. This is entirely not true and I just want to know why is this stalling mode necessary.

I welcome all support I can get to have the expansion of the Sumac/Mariposa stopped as it will negatively impact our environment and way of life. Additionally, it is important that Sumac get a fair share of the what is needed for their success as the Foutainwood community school.

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