LETTERS HART HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT SHOULD CHANGE PRIORITY LIST.

As required by the California State Allocation Board, all school districts applying for state funding for new school construction must submit, among other facts and figures, a list of schools within their districts that need the funding. The school districts then determine which school project would be funded first using a point system. The school project with the highest number of points receives the highest priority for funding. The school districts board of directors determines the points.

At the William S. Hart High School District board of directors meeting last March, the board members revealed the priority list they said was being submitted to the State Allocation Board meeting in June. The priority list publicly released at the March meeting was as follows, starting with the school project with the highest priority points:

No. 1 - West Ranch High School, Stevenson Ranch, 659 points.

No. 2 - Rancho Pico Jr. High School, Stevenson Ranch, 500 points.

No. 3 - Golden Valley High School, Canyon Country, 399 points.

Generally, any school project receiving less than 500 points has little or no chance of state funds.

Some time after the March school district meeting, Hart School District Superintendent Robert Lee created an ad hoc committee to reevaluate the priority points before submitting them to the State Allocation Board.

In my opinion, the ad hoc committee violates the California Brown Act, which requires open, public meetings. The March board meeting never said anything about creating this committee nor has there been any opportunity for public input to this committee. Then, there is a possible conflict of interest issue. Not only is Lee the school superintendent but he also sits on the board of directors of a group called the Santa Clarita Valley Facilities Foundation, which owns the property that the Golden Valley High School is to be built on.

As a result of the point shifting by this ad hoc committee the following list was revised, without public notice, and submitted to the State Allocation Board and the Office of Public School Construction:

No. 1 - Golden Valley High School, Canyon Country, 659 points.

No. 2 - Rancho Pico Jr. High School, Stevenson Ranch, 500 points.

No. 3 - West Ranch High School, Stevenson Ranch, 401 points.

The public still doesn't know the reasons for the point shifting. A Hart School District document even stated that since the West Ranch High School and the Rancho Pico Jr. High School were going to be built next to each other, it made sense since they built at the same time.

If not for the Hart School District's last-minute decision, all indications are that the West Ranch School project would have been fully funded by the end of September. Now, that school is No. 179 out of 198 schools on a state-funding waiting list.

Why would Mr. Lee and the William S. Hart School District make these private, last-minute changes? I could only think of two reasons. Both are rather sinister and both may be wrong.

First, Lee is associated with the group that owns the Golden Valley property. It would certainly benefit that group to be first on the funding list. The second reason is actually the reason that came to my mind. The Golden Valley site has a large number of ecological problems that have been made very public. The Golden Valley site has even been referred to as Belmont, a reference to the bio-hazard-plagued school site in Los Angeles.

Last year the Hart High School District lost an attempt to pass a bond measure, in part, due to the Golden Valley site problems. Now, as expected, the Hart School District is considering another attempt at passing a school bond. This time not for the pittance sum of $52 million like last year but for a whopping $156 million.

If the Hart Board can get the State Allocation Board to pay for the Golden Valley High School project, then the public could more easily be convinced to say yes to a bond that will pay for the relatively clean site for the two Stevenson Ranch schools. The residents of Stevenson Ranch, the Summit and Sunset Point should be outraged at this decision. The west side of this Valley is not being adequately served by the Hart School District. What can we do about it? It is not too late for the Hart School District to change the priority list before the September funding.

Now is not the time to remain silent.

- Gary W. Schamber

Stevenson Ranch

Plan would hurt habitat

Thank you for your recent in-depth story as it relates to our endangered arroyo toad, I would like to respond to some statements that were made by various city and county officials.

City officials claim they are handling the discovery of the toad in the Santa Clara River the same way they are handling the finding on the site of Transmit Mixed Concrete Inc.'s mine.

However, the city approved a haul route through the creek, a grading permit for the east side of the creek, and allowed Newhall (Land and Farming Company) to destroy all the wetlands on North Valencia II. In one respect and contrary to the city's attempt to portray the projects as ``fundamentally different,'' for the wildlife, there is no fundamental difference between having your habitat destroyed by a housing development or by a gravel mine. Once it's gone. it's gone.

While the city filed suit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services, claiming it violated the Endangered Species Act, officials asked the federal agency to reduce the arroyo toad's designated habitat significantly. At the time, city officials said the rare toads had not been spotted for the many years while development was in place.

Designated critical habitat has already been approved and will not include the Santa Clara River and the San Francisquito Creek, in large part because of the city of Santa Clarita and Newhall (Land's) letter to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services opposing critical habitat for the arroyo toad.

Mayor Laurene Weste also claims the city didn't know the toad was there. Though she may not have known, Newhall Land and Farming was aware of the presence of the arroyo toad in the Santa Clara River and San Francisquito Creek.

Newhall Land and Farming submitted a letter to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on Aug. 4, 2000, opposing the designations of critical habitat based upon their contention that there were no records of the toads within the proposed project area and that the habitat was not suitable. In fact, Newhall's own (Environmental Impact Reports) on the various projects document the presence of the toad in 1994, 1996 and 1998, and more recent discoveries in 2000 and 20001 reconfirm its presence. As to the habitat being unsuitable, if the toads exist in this area, there is suitable habitat.

Then, county officials said Newhall Land's biological studies checked out during the review process while those for the TMC mine were incomplete.

The fact we now know the toads had been observed in the Santa Clara River and San Francisquito Creek and that Newhall has been aware of its since, at the very least, 1996 would lead most people to believe Newhall's surveys are woefully incomplete.

But the county claims that it doesn't want endangered species hurt and that this will happen through the litigation over the West Creek Project.

If this is true, then the city and county should immediately move to join the lawsuit, which is motivated by a desire to protect endangered species and their habitats. It is patently ludicrous to claim (as Newhall has) that the NRMP (Natural River Management Plan) will ``improve'' habitat for wildlife, including the arroyo toad. Ongoing and planned activities on these projects likely have and will result in direct harm (killing) of listed species and will result in the loss and degradation of hundreds of acres of habitat for listed and other protected species.

But county officials approved the West Creek project earlier this year, allowing grading to be done in the San Francisquito Creek for a much-needed new junior high school.

The school could have been built without the haul route, which not only is destroying the creek but allowing Newhall to dump tons of dirt, fill in wetlands and ensure that adequate surveys to the arroyo toads could never again be accomplished.

U.S. Rep. Howard P. ``Buck'' McKeon also rejects claims that his call for additional studies for the impact of the mine on the endangered toads is at all inconsistent as critics have charged.

This again is not true. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, a federal agency legally mandated to protect and preserve endangered species, has been deliberately silent on this issue. It is also an Army Corps of Engineers (a federal agency) permit that is permitting bank stabilization and bridges that will permanently destroy the arroyo toads' habitat.

Newhall has claimed (in federal court) that their NRMP will actually benefit wildlife, including the arroyo toad. Independent wildlife biologists, scientists and experts on the arroyo toad and other species have reviewed the NRMP and strongly disagree with Newhall's contention.

In my opinion, it is highly likely that if the NRMP is implemented as planned, it will result in massive loss and degradation of habitat within and adjacent to the project area not only for listed species, such as the arroyo toads, unarmored three-spine stickleback and least Bell's vireo, but also for several other state species of special concern. The failure to address these kinds of problems is one of the reasons that species become listed - the arroyo toad was a state species of special concern before it became federally endangered.

- Teresa Savaikie

Saugus