La Reina High organizers bid for backup Moorpark campus as lawsuit stalls

Families, alumni and staff of La Reina High School and Middle School are trying just about everything they can to keep the all-girls Catholic campus alive for another year as the Thousand Oaks school heads for a permanent closure in June.

The grassroots campaign called Save La Reina announced in an email to supporters on Wednesday that the group is trying to resuscitate La Reina in a new form in Moorpark next school year if their push to keep the current campus open fails.

Laird Wilson, a former La Reina staffer helping lead the project, said Friday that the group has a $6.8 million bid in progress to buy the former Pinecrest School at 14100 Peach Hill Road and is raising funds for the deal.

A day after the campus announcement, the group announced that their lawsuit against the Catholic sisters who founded the school had stalled after law firm Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani pulled its attorneys off the case.

The Thursday email said the move came after the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, a client of the firm for other, unconnected issues, told the firm it couldn't represent the archdiocese and the grassroots group out a conflict of interest.

The Thousand Oaks school, founded nearly six decades ago by the Sisters of Notre Dame, has seen enrollment cut in half over the last eight years. Still, the January announcement that the sisters plan to close the school at the end of the current year was a shock to the school's tight-knit community of staff, alumni and students.

More: UPDATED: La Reina High to close at end of the year

Save La Reina emerged within days of the closure announcement, organizing online signature drives and protesting outside the campus.

The lawsuit, which asks the Ventura County Superior Court to stop the school's closure, and the back-up campus plan add two more prongs to Save La Reina's all-out effort to maintain an all-girls Catholic school in east Ventura County.

Laura Koehl, the chief operating officer of the sisters' National Ministry Corporation, said in an email on Friday that neither the conflict of interest nor the alternative campus plan involve the order and offered no further comment.

Conflict of Interest

In the Thursday email, Save La Reina said that the law firm's decision to drop the case came against pushback from the lead attorney.

The firm and and its attorney Kelly Drew, a 2000 La Reina graduate who drafted much of the suit, "did everything in their power to keep the case," the email said, but ethical codes barred the firm from taking the case while the archdiocese claims a conflict of interest.

"But let us be clear," the group wrote, "There is no actual conflict of interest."

The archdiocese, the group said, previously claimed to be detached from the school.

"La Reina is not a school of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles," Yannina Diaz, an archdiocese spokesperson, wrote in a Jan. 31 statement sent to the Star. "The Archdiocese has no oversight of the school."

Bill Calle, a plaintiff on the lawsuit and parent of a La Reina sophomore and junior, was incredulous about the alleged conflict of interest in a Friday interview.

"It's in direct opposition to their earlier claims that they have no authority," Calle said. "You can't have it both ways."

In a statement on Friday, Diaz distinguished between the school's ownership and operation — the job of the sisters — and the responsibility of the archdiocese to "ensure the Catholic identity" of Catholic schools within its bounds.

The archdiocese, Diaz wrote, nevertheless flagged the suit because the order is part of the Catholic community and its sisters serve in various archdiocesean ministries.

"When the archdiocese was made aware of the lawsuit, it was brought to the attention of the (law firm) so that the firm could evaluate if there was any conflict," Diaz wrote. "The law firm made the decision to withdraw."

Calle said Friday that the law firm is working to help the plaintiffs find a different firm to represent them.

"We're going to move forward with or without them," he said. "The hard work was done by (Drew) in drafting the suit."

La Reina Reborn

If Save La Reina's ambitious plan to have a new campus ready for the first day of school this fall pans out, things will look slightly different.

The potential campus is smaller, Wilson said Friday, with 20 total classrooms and a field that may or may not be large enough for the school's soccer team.

The name could be ever-so-slightly different. Wilson said the group is considering calling the planned campus La Reina Academy.

But in every way it is able, Save La Reina said it is trying to mimic the old alma mater in its plans for a new location, holding onto its identity as a high-performing, all-girls Catholic school.

"The ideal situation would be that we just pick everybody up and move them to the new location," Wilson said.

There are a number of obstacles left as the group embarks on what Wilson called a "mad scramble" to start a new campus by fall.

The group needs donors to fund its bid for the property and is still just partway through the process of incorporating a new nonprofit to support the project.

Save La Reina is in the process of putting together a board for the proposed school and has opened conversations with "other Catholic entities" about sponsoring the campus as a Catholic school.

The project also needs to be nailed down quickly enough to recruit students to help fund it via tuition. In a February survey of 145 parents and guardians, Save La Reina found that 52% had definite interest in an alternate campus, but another 30% needed more information before they were convinced.

Calle said he is a "very likely yes" to enroll his daughters in the alternate campus, even though they've already been enrolled in another private school for the fall.

But he still holds concerns, he said, about whether the project will be able to come together quickly enough to retain staff and students.

Next year is his oldest daughter's senior year, he said, and time is short.

"She doesn't have the time frame for them to work the kinks out," he said.

Wilson was cautiously optimistic. If the property deal goes through, he said, the group will get keys to the campus in May, enough time to have the campus for the fall.

"All I know is we're moving forward to close this deal out," he said. "This is a very, very good option for us."

Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools. You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: La Reina High organizers bid for backup campus as lawsuit stalls