In Rosemead, Temple City : Focus on Scores, Enrichment

Two Rosemead school board members who have long been at odds over the feasibility of adding more enrichment programs have put that disagreement at the forefront of their campaigns to retain their seats in the Nov. 5 election.

Although the two incumbents agree that enrichment programs, such as free preschool programs for disadvantaged children and accelerated classes for fast learners, are needed, they differ on how many special programs the district can afford.

Concerns over whether the district is properly meeting the educational needs of minorities also have been raised by several of the five candidates vying for three four-year terms.

In nearby Temple City, five candidates competing for two seats are focusing on what they agree is a need to strengthen the curriculum. The candidates believe that improving the curriculum will help raise standardized test scores, which they said have been declining.

Gary E. Goodson, director of instructions for the district, said that student test scores on state and district standardized tests have shown improvement, but conceded that scores in the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a college entrance examination, have been declining.

“But we are turning it around,” Goodson said, adding that Scholastic Aptitude Test scores in Temple City reflect similar declines nationwide.

Rosemead

The most vocal candidates in the Rosemead enrichment program dispute are incumbents Elaine D. Pendleton and Alfredo Silvestre, who have long clashed over the number and kind of enrichment programs the district should offer.

Pendleton and two other challengers, Marie E. Ortiz and Dennis S. McDonald, have joined forces in what Pendleton hopes will be a successful effort to unseat Silvestre. The third challenger is Patricia Reynolds-Mejia.

Pendleton, 45, director of fiscal services for the El Monte City School District, was on the board that appointed Silvestre a year and a half ago to fill a seat that became vacant when Alex Brandon resigned.

“I’ve been disappointed in him,” Pendleton said of Silvestre. “He’s very interested in pushing certain auxiliary programs at the expense of regular educational programs.”

Silvestre, 37, a telephone systems technician and the father of five, believes that the district should work to reduce the number of children who are not promoted out of kindergarten.

In the 1984-85 school year, the first year in which such records were kept, 37 of 312 kindergartners in the district were retained, said May Nitta, executive secretary to Rosemead Supt. Richard Harris. The district started keeping such records because “we were having an inordinate number of retentions,” Nitta said. She estimated that before 1984, about 10 kindergartners were held back each year.

One way to ensure that students are promoted is to provide Head Start-type preschool programs, Silvestre said. Head Start is a 20-year-old federal program designed to improve the intellectual performance and personal adjustment of disadvantaged children.

He said that the experience of being held back may instill an inferiority complex in children, and that providing disadvantaged children with free programs that prepare them for formal education might spare students such trauma.

The students who suffer the most are minority children whose parents cannot afford to send them to private preschools, Silvestre said.

Although Pendleton, who has three children, said she supports the concept behind enrichment programs, she does not believe that there is enough money for all the programs the district would like to offer. She said that her experience in school-system financing has made her very aware of funding and funding sources.

“He (Silvestre) would like to see certain things happening and he’s not aware of the complexities involved,” Pendleton said.

Silvestre, a naturalized U.S. citizen who moved to the United States from Mexico when he was 6, also said that the interests of the district’s large Latino population are not adequately represented on the board. “Since the city is changing so drastically, we need someone up there to reflect the feeling of the community,” said Silvestre.

The most recent statistics on minority enrollment in the Rosemead School District indicate that 56% of the students are Latino and 12.5% are Asian.

But Pendleton, who is also Latino, said that the board has been “doing a pretty good job” of responding to the needs of Latino children.

“It is our responsibility to help the children learn English and to be able to succeed in English, said Pendleton, who favors programs in English as a second language programs over a bilingual approach. “It’s not possible to provide for every child in their native language.”

All of the candidates agreed on the need to better meet minority needs, including those of Asian-Americans, and to raise graduation standards in the district.

“We need to somehow solve the Asian linguistic problem because of the variety of dialects you get coming into the schools,” candidate Dennis S. McDonald said.

The two candidates aligned with Pendleton, Mary E. Ortiz, a librarian, and McDonald, an El Monte fire marshal, said that the three decided to run together to pool financial resources, and not necessarily because they agreed with each other politically.

“Each one of us is an independent thinker,” McDonald said. ‘We’re not tied down to any one issue.”

For example, although Pendleton and Silvestre clash on the issue of enrichment programs, Ortiz said she favors such programs, especially in the sciences. “The children need a good foundation in the basics, but they also need enhancement programs to make the schools a better experience,” Ortiz said.

“There’s a compatibility,” McDonald said. “We’re all thinking school district improvement.”

Ortiz, a 40-year-old mother of three, said she believes that parents should have a big say in education.

“I think that if the public or parents have interest in a certain problem, I would weigh their needs very heavily,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz, who worked as an instructional aide at Janson Elementary School in Rosemead from 1980 to 1982, added, “I really know the workings and the realities of the classroom. I can lend a realistic view.”

McDonald, 43, who feels his two sons benefited from Rosemead district schools, said, “I would like to make sure that the children who come after them are offered the same opportunity.

“We need to improve them by concentrating on the curriculum, on the basic skills,” McDonald said.

Reynolds-Mejia, 47, a family counselor who has two children, stressed her professional involvement with youths as a major strength of her candidacy.

She said that she favors enrichment programs but added that she is opposed to anything that would jeopardize students’ basic learning. “If it’s structured right, you can have kids in the same room working at their own pace, without jeopardizing the other’s progress,” Reynolds-Mejia said.

Temple City

While the Rosemead candidates are debating the issues of enrichment programs and minority needs, the five contenders in the Temple City race are focusing on the quality of the curriculum in that district.

Candidates have come up with varying proposals for improving the selection and quality of courses in the Temple City district. For example, incumbent Shirley A. Norman, a mother of three grown children who was first elected to the board in 1969, wants to make the curriculum more practical.

Norman said that she wants to provide students, college-bound or not, with “salable skills.”

“Not every young person we have is going to college,” Norman said. “And every person realistically cannot afford to go to college without working.

“It is my desire to provide (vocational) skills for those high school graduates that want them as they leave high school, even if they are going to pursue more education,” said Norman.

Optometrist Warren E. Hall, 42, a father of two who is seeking a second term, wants to increase the number and improve the selection of science programs. Hall also favors more programs designed for high achievers.

But challenger Nancy Cash, 43, an educator who has three children, prefers to strengthen academic programs for the average student. “When you have special classes for the high achiever, there is a danger that the honors programs can become elitist,” Cash said. “I would like to see them opened up to more students.” Otherwise, the board should strengthen the curriculum for the average student, Cash said.

Rudolph Sanders, a 29-year-old insurance appraiser who has no children, contends that school is so easy that a person can sleep through classes and still pass. He wants to see schools “go back to the basics.”

“The school system is a little too liberal,” Sanders said. “Maybe a plain Joe like me can bring basic values back to education.”

Sanders, who said he is considering a career teaching auto repair, said that one of the reasons he is running is because “this is one way of getting in the door to teaching.”

Other issues raised by candidates include in-service training for teachers and the caliber of new teachers.

“A staff should be entitled to take advantage of any programs that come along and enhance their skills and increase their knowledge,” Norman said.

Cash, an English teacher at Arcadia High School who has three children, said, “I would like to see recruiting that’s innovative. My concern is that we draw into the teaching profession talented people who have not considered the profession before.”

Both Norman and Cash want to provide students with more textbooks. Norman would go a step further, establishing media centers with computers, cable television and audio-visual aids as well.

Cash, who has taught for more than 15 years, said that her “front-line battle experience in the classroom” would make her a good board member. “Some people think that I will be unable to judge fairly (on teacher vs. administration issues),” Cash said.

“I am an independent thinker. I’m not there to defend every single teacher.” Instead, Cash views herself as a “bridge between the board and the faculty.”

Barbara Dabul, 43, a speech pathologist and mother of one, said she decided to run when she noticed at one point that no one had filed for the election.

“Every public office should have a candidate,” said Dabul. After others filed, she decided to run anyway because “it’s a good idea to have new ideas and new energy coming in,” she said.

Dabul said she wants to deal with the issues as fairly as possible and to treat them seriously. She said that at some of the meetings she attended, there was a lot of “joking and flippancy.”