Area Schools Brace for Record Number of Students

Scrambling to keep pace with surging enrollment, Ventura County educators will welcome a record number of students this school year by setting up trailers and carving out classroom space wherever they can find it.

With enrollment expected to top 130,000 students--up about 2% from last year--school districts from Thousand Oaks to Ventura have added hundreds of teachers to meet that demand and push forward with a statewide campaign to reduce class sizes in primary grades.

The Conejo Valley district and the high school district in Oxnard project the largest gains, each growing by about 600 students.

At the same time, the new school year will usher in a number of initiatives aimed at renewing the emphasis on reading, resurrecting music and art programs and revamping academic standards in core subjects such as reading and math.

“In Ventura County, we are doing a very good job with our top kids. They can compete with any child in the world,” county schools Supt. Charles Weis said. “Unfortunately, not enough kids in our county are reaching that standard and it will be our challenge this school year to help students get closer to that goal.”

While some districts already are back in session, the vast majority of students return to class this week. And thorny issues abound.

The push to cut class size will continue as another 10,000 students countywide are expected to learn in classrooms of 20 students or fewer. About 18,000 students were funneled into the smaller classes last year.

In Oak Park, third-grade students will find themselves in classrooms with fewer students as the district expands a program that already encompassed kindergarten through second grade.

And in Ventura, district officials hope to broaden their class-size efforts by using money Gov. Pete Wilson poured into the reduction program earlier this month. The district was going to extend the program only from the first through second grades, but now can include some kindergarten and third grades as well.

“We are so convinced that 20-to-1 is the solution to quality education that we are going to reduce class size wherever we can,” Supt. Joseph Spirito said.

In Simi Valley and Camarillo, hundreds of sixth-graders have chosen to make the leap to middle school this year instead of staying in elementary school.

The two districts are launching so-called middle school choice programs, providing sixth-graders with selection between the stability of a single-teacher elementary class and the more diverse offerings and teaching styles at middle schools.

At the Pleasant Valley district in Camarillo, 120 sixth-graders will attend Monte Vista Intermediate School. And in Simi Valley, one-fourth of the district’s 1,380 sixth-graders will attend Hillside, Sinaloa and Valley View middle schools.

“It’s exciting,” said Becky Wetzel, Simi Valley’s director of curriculum and instruction. The program “allows the sixth-graders to participate at the middle school level and join activities there, like performing arts and physical education.”

Other innovations include an expansion by the superintendent of schools office of a reading program with new textbooks and teacher training.

The training will extend to teachers of the fourth through sixth grades. Last year, teachers in the primary grades underwent the same training.

In related efforts, children in grades one through five in Moorpark will start a reading curriculum combining language arts and phonics. And in Oxnard, the elementary school district will launch an initiative to teach parents to help with homework.

The Oxnard project is funded with $250,000 earmarked in the governor’s budget. The district will hire a community outreach teacher, who will provide parents with literacy and English as a Second Language training.

Back-to-school fashions will take a new twist at a handful of campuses, where uniform policies have been adopted.

Youngsters in Fillmore and at three more schools in Oxnard will wear uniforms this year, continuing a trend that officials say gains popularity each year.

“It’s always driven by the families,” said Bernard Korenstein, superintendent of the Oxnard Elementary District, where four schools have adopted such voluntary policies. “I think a lot of it depends on where the parents went to school and whether they themselves wore uniforms. But if it’s something parents feel strongly about, we are supportive of those policies.”

One of the biggest issues facing school districts this year is the need for classroom space to handle growth and continue class-size reduction.

Already strained to capacity, many districts are setting up portable trailers and planning to build new schools.

In Ventura, enrollment has surged by about 2,000 students over the past three years. And in the Oxnard Union High School District, officials said classrooms are about 2,500 students over capacity.

Planners in both districts are laying the groundwork for new construction, bolstered by the recent passage of large school bond measures.

Down the road in Camarillo, Pleasant Valley officials were trying to put up the last of 20 portables needed to keep pace with growth and shrink class sizes.

There was the possibility that at least one school might not be ready to open for the first day of classes on Wednesday, officials said.

“We’re going like crazy putting in these relocatables,” said Howard Hamilton, associate superintendent with Pleasant Valley. “We’re scrambling to get ready, but it’s going to be close.”

In the Conejo Valley district, which projects record enrollment of 19,172 students, 61 new portable classrooms have been added since summer 1996.

To help handle that load, district officials said they plan to build a new Lang Ranch Elementary School. And they said they will soon have little choice but to curb the number of portables on elementary school campuses.

“You can’t keep adding at the elementary schools,” Conejo Valley Supt. Jerry Gross said. “Portables gobble up playground space.”

While planners wrestle with those issues, Ventura County educators are also pushing forward with a number of innovative academic programs.

At Newbury Park High School, juniors and seniors will begin taking their first tests in Spanish-language literature or Greek philosophy as part of an international baccalaureate diploma program launched last year.

The program is geared to help students interested in languages, politics, diplomatic relations and overseas business. Credits are accepted at universities around the world.

Also this year, a task force of Simi Valley teachers is expected to recommend that the district boost its graduation requirements from 220 units to 230 units, officials said.

“Our district is moving toward higher standards, and this is one way to encourage that,” said Becky Wetzel at the Simi Valley district. “We don’t want to raise the requirements just to raise them. But it’s in the students’ best interest to make them more competitive as they enter college.”

Along those same lines, as the state pushes to adopt a uniform set of academic standards, each district in the county is expected to take a hard look at its own standards during the school year.

“It’s a major effort to help all kids reach higher levels than they have ever reached before,” said Supt. Weis with the county schools office. “Certainly for education, this is the best of times. But it’s also a great challenge and people really expect us to deliver.”