A Camarillo school board will again face off with a packed room of parents this week, a month after it decided to close schools, shuffle students among campuses and restructure long-standing programs.

At the specially called meeting Thursday, Pleasant Valley School District trustees are expected to hold a public hearing on a new charter school application and take another look at its decision to eliminate middle school students from Santa Rosa Technology Magnet School.

A parent handed that charter application to the staff during the board's March meeting, when trustees voted to dismantle the K-7 Los Senderos Open School.

After shutting down the program at its current campus, the board designated Rancho Rosal School as a K-5 magnet with an open philosophy starting in the fall. The district has said the new magnet would give priority to K-4 Los Senderos students.

But Los Senderos parents said they still would lose their middle school grades, and they don't think the 30-year program will stay intact at the new school.

"The future of true alternative schools like Los Senderos is chartering," said Chris Parker, a Los Senderos parent and one of the leaders of the charter movement. "We as a community realize that now."

Parker, other parents and Los Senderos teachers hope to convert to a K-8 charter school by the fall. The school would be called the Camarillo Academy of Progressive Education, or CAPE, and organizers expect to retain 350 current Los Senderos students.

The district isn't expected to consider the application Thursday, but it will hear public testimony.

The board's decisions last month on Santa Rosa and other schools came after the district staff recommended closing three schools to save $1.5 million, which could help the district offer more competitive salary and benefit packages.

Some cost savings will come from a reduction of classified positions, and trustees will be asked to sign off on a list of layoffs Thursday, said interim Superintendent Ken Moffett. The board also will consider signing off on a 4 percent raise for the classified staff, made retroactive to July 1.

While Moffett and the district staff had recommended the closures and other campus changes, he said Tuesday that his initial recommendation was to make Santa Rosa a K-8 campus. The board chose to keep only one K-8 campus Los Primeros Structured School to maximize the number of students at the district's two comprehensive middle schools.

Moffett said Santa Rosa attracts students from outside the Pleasant Valley boundaries, adding a financial incentive to keep the program running.

Santa Rosa was expected to add eighth-graders this year. But in March, the school board voted to cut its sixth and seventh grades.

Santa Rosa parents said they had no warning that their middle school grades would be lost and hired an attorney, who then asked the district to remedy the situation and give parents a chance to address trustees.

Moffett said he doesn't think that the board's prior action broke the state's open meeting law. But, he said, there were enough questions for him to recommend the issue be placed on Thursday's agenda.

This time, Santa Rosa parents plan to be prepared. They formed a finance committee, and members have spent the past month crunching the numbers.

Rick Hazeltine, a parent of a Santa Rosa second-grader, said they think the move would cause the district to lose a lot of money both in expenses required to move students to another middle school campus and because dozens of families at Santa Rosa likely would leave the district.

"I think if they take the numbers to heart and look at this, (trustees will see) it would be better to have two K-8s," said Hazeltine.