Proponents of a decade-long effort in Camarillo to secede from the Oxnard Union High School District cleared a major hurdle Thursday, as community members presented county school officials with a 9,590-signature petition to place the issue on a local ballot.
"Today is kind of like taking your final exam at the university level," said Ron Speakman, president of the Pleasant Valley Elementary school board, which is pushing to include secondary schools in a unified Camarillo district. "It's a huge sigh of relief that we are where we are."
After the signatures are verified by the county clerk's office, the Ventura County superintendent of schools and the county Board of Education will have 120 days to review the petition before making a recommendation to state education officials.
The state education department will evaluate factors such as district size and financial effect before it makes a decision on whether to go forward. The county can then call an election.
The process can take as long as three years, county Supt. Charles Weis told the small group of volunteers who had gathered to present the educator with four cardboard boxes full of signatures.
If successful, the community group will create a new unified school district that would merge Adolfo Camarillo High School with the 14 elementary and middle schools in Camarillo's Pleasant Valley School District. If that happens, about 700 Camarillo teenagers currently at Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard would be relocated.
While efforts to secede from the Oxnard district began as early as 1992, they found new momentum in the spring of 2002, when community leaders in Camarillo began gathering signatures. They needed signatures from 25% of the registered voters in the Pleasant Valley district -- or about 9,400 people -- to qualify for state review.
Moorpark was the last city to create its own unified school district in 1981, Weis said.
"I think we are at a point in our development as a city, with more than 60,000 people, that we should proceed to see if people want to have their own high school and their own unified school district," said Bill Little, former Camarillo city manager and an organizer of the petition drive. "Thousand Oaks did it ... Moorpark did it ... and it's time for us to do the same thing."
