CORRECTION: Knott's Berry Farm officials say they have “no intention of buying, leasing or renting” the Walter Knott Elementary School site.
UPDATE: The district has scheduled a community meeting to discuss the possible closure (details on both below) . . .
A Buena Park elementary school named after the late Walter Knott, the paranoid loon who founded Knott's Berry Farm, is closing may close at the end of the school year to become a parking lot for . . . wait for it . . . Knott's Berry Farm.
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CORRECTION: “Knott's Berry Farm was surprised and saddened to hear
of the possible closure of Walter Knott Elementary School,” writes
Director of Marketing Michele A. Wischmeyer in an email to the Weekly
today. “. . . Knott's has no intention of buying, leasing or renting
the property.”
UPDATE: Students brought home letters to their parents that state
dwindling enrollment
over the past eight years, coupled with an $8 million reduction in
state funding over the past two years, is causing district officials to
consider closing Walter Knott Elementary. A community meeting to discuss
the possible closure is scheduled for 6 p.m. Monday in the Walter Knott
multi-purpose room. More details are available on the district wesbite,
www.cesd.us.
Like school systems up and down the state, the Centralia Elementary School
District is strapped for cash.
But parents who are upset they are just learning about the closure now, and they held a meeting last night at the school at 7300 La Palma Ave., Buena Park, to vent their frustrations.
Among them is Monica Aguilar, the mother of a second grader who is a gifted student at the school that opened in 1958.
“This came as a huge surprise we when heard about it this
Monday, because there was no communications between Centralia school district
and the community,” she wrote in an email to the Weekly. “We were not given the opportunity to fight to save our
school.”
UPDATE FROM MEETING WITH SCHOOL OFFICIALS THIS WEEK:
Two days before Knott's Berry Farm denied it will buy, rent or lease the school named after the theme park's founder, parents who had been told by staff
members at the school that Knott's needed the land for a five tier parking
structure heard the district superintendent say at a meeting the site will be rented out.
“It is sad that these rumors are going around, but it is even
sadder that the school district is electing to close one of the highest
performing schools,” said Aguilar. “. . . The bottom line is that they are
choosing profit over education.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.