20% Rise in Number of Students Projected : Oxnard: The high school district needs a seventh campus to cope with the growth over five years, officials say. A new bond measure is likely.

Student enrollment in the Oxnard Union High School District, which is already plagued by severe overcrowding, is expected to increase by nearly 20% within the next five years, according to a new district report.

Enrollment is expected to jump from 11,823 in the current school year to 13,986 by 1997-98, the report said.

The projected increase, which underscores the need for a seventh high school campus, is based on the number of students in surrounding elementary districts who eventually will graduate to the high school district, officials said.

“It’s really a serious situation,” district business manager Robert Brown said Monday. “We have to build another high school.”

The district, which now includes five high schools and one continuation high school, already exceeds its capacity by 1,200 students, Brown said. The result has been larger class sizes and an increasing dependency on portable classrooms.

And while the district’s enrollment projections would represent a significant increase in the student population, Brown said the actual number of incoming students will probably be even greater.

The reason is that the estimates do not include any additional growth that would occur from new residential development in Oxnard and Camarillo, which is included in the Oxnard high school district.

For every 100 new houses, it is estimated that 16 new students enter the high school district, Brown said. Camarillo alone has been growing at a rate of about 400 houses a year, he said.

Although the district has purchased a 50-acre site at the northeast end of Oxnard for a new campus, it has yet to raise the money needed to build it. In April, Oxnard voters rejected a $45-million bond issue that was to have financed construction.

With the continuing growth in enrollment, the district will have little choice but to go back to the voters with another bond measure, said board member Steve Stocks.

“If we don’t,” he said, “conditions will soon be intolerable.”

Without another high school, Stocks said the district would have to consider going to a year-round schedule or at least staggering classes throughout the day to accommodate more students.

The district also wants developers to assume more responsibility for providing adequate school facilities to accommodate new growth. Only last week, the district increased the impact fees it charges residential developers to raise funds for new construction.

“If there is more development, it is going to impact our schools,” Stocks said. “So developers are going to have to take a better look at how they are going to alleviate the conditions they create. Schools are as much a part of the city’s infrastructure as sewers and roads.”

According to the district’s projections, Camarillo High School is expected to increase its current enrollment of 2,060 students to 2,248 by the 1997-98 school year; Channel Islands High School would go from 2,583 to 2,807; Hueneme High School from 2,372 to 2,771; Oxnard High School from 2,132 to 2,777; and Rio Mesa High School from 2,029 to 2,736.

The district expects enrollment at Frontier Continuation High School, now at 261 students, to remain about the same.

School officials said they will probably wait a year before placing another bond measure on the ballot. They said they want to first see whether the state’s voters approve an initiative next year that would make it easier for local bond measures to be passed.

If approved, the June, 1994, ballot measure would allow local bond measures to be approved by a simple majority, rather than the two-thirds vote now required.