More Educational Bang for the Buck in La Jolla? : Learning: Parents in this affluent seaside community keep a close eye on city schools. If dissatisfied with their childrens’ education, they can afford to place their offspring in a private academy.

By next September, Dennis Doyle would like to lure back to Torrey Pines Elementary School at least 20 students whose parents have spurned public education for private academies in the La Jolla area.

The new principal has set that goal--5% of the school’s enrollment of 372--as a key management objective on which he expects to be evaluated next year.

“It’s healthy for schools to compete in the open, in the public arena, especially since (in La Jolla) many parents have knowledge of and access to ‘choice’ with private schools,” said Doyle. He plans to distribute a slick brochure extolling the academic and multi-ethnic benefits of Torrey Pines and to proselytize at neighborhood service clubs and preschools.

In seaside La Jolla, among the county’s most affluent areas with average family income of $77,000, parents demand high-powered public education and closely monitor the public schools for acceptable results. Many can and will turn to one of more than half a dozen private schools--even at tuition costs ranging upwards from $5,000 a year--if dissatisfied for any reason about the individual instruction being provided their offspring.

For example, at La Jolla High School several years ago, two parents angry at their childrens’ history instructor took the extreme measure of writing alternative lesson plans themselves and giving them to the teacher. The teacher later resigned.

Other parents upset with the public system have simply gone private for one child and, after seeing good results, placed their other children privately as well. Some move their children back and forth between public and private.

In handling such pressures, teachers and principals at La Jolla’s five public schools must grapple more intensely with key urban educational issues, unlike colleagues in typical well-to-do cities. Unlike most upscale, white suburban areas, their schools are part of a large urban district--San Diego Unified, the nation’s eighth largest--and therefore share the challenges of integration and equity in a system where only 41% of the 119,000 students are white.

Several hundred low-income students from the San Diego barrio are bused to La Jolla schools each day under district voluntary integration programs, bringing together student populations with widely varying cultural and academic levels.

More than a quarter of the students in La Jolla public schools, ranging from 35% at Muirlands Junior High to 20% at Bird Rock Elementary, are Latino, many of them primary Spanish speakers. Without those students, more La Jolla public schools might be forced to close in the face of declining enrollments. Low student numbers already shut down two elementaries in 1983.

The mix requires educators to accomplish two seemingly incompatible goals: show apprehensive neighborhood parents that the multi-ethnic mix does not dilute academic rigor and satisfy the larger San Diego community--and the courts--that classes are integrated and that bused children receive just as good an education.

The pressures differ at each educational level, with the hardest battle fought by those at Muirlands, where teachers have to juggle not only parent perceptions concerning academic standards but also doubts about trusting the public school to cope with the perils of adolescence.

La Jolla High School, with its long tradition of strong principals and teachers, and an impressive track record of sending its graduates to top universities nationwide, has perhaps the best reputation among parents in matching the offerings at The Bishop’s School, the highly respected private secondary school in La Jolla.

In an effort to improve the overall public school curriculum--especially at the junior high level--and to relieve some crowding at the small Bird Rock campus, all La Jolla sixth-graders will go to Muirlands next September, making it a 6-through-8 middle school with La Jolla High becoming a 9-12 school.

“It’s trickiest to implement (district goals) in La Jolla, where academics is pushed so hard, and where parents, rightly or wrongly, look at academic progress more than student socialization or their handling of (cultural) diversity,” said San Diego city schools trustee Kay Davis, who has closely watched changes in La Jolla during her almost eight years on the school board.

In particular, La Jolla parents value and track closely the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program, which offers special instruction and opportunities for exceptional students. Almost a third of La Jolla students are eligible for some aspect of GATE offerings and parents grumble when lack of space in the program or the requirements of ethnic balance limit GATE participation.

San Diego schools Supt. Tom Payzant said in an interview that what is played out daily in La Jolla educational circles reflects “the challenge of working simultaneously toward two goals--equity and excellence-- in an atmosphere where some people believe the two are incompatible.

“If we can offer high-quality academic programs, then students don’t have to go elsewhere for strong math and science, or for advanced placement courses, or whatever,” Payzant said.

Payzant wants his schools strengthened to the point where parents will have no compelling reasons academically to choose private schools, and will do so only if they “do not want a setting with large class sizes or diverse populations.”

Private schools emphasize the ability to offer strong academics along with small class sizes in a controlled environment but avoid criticizing the public schools.

“Every private, or independent school, emphasizes what it believes to be its mission, rather than seeing itself in” direct competition with public schools, Timothy Burns, headmaster at La Jolla Country Day School, said.

Burns acknowledged that recruitment in La Jolla is easier when confidence in public schools is low, although none of the La Jolla-area private schools is having problems attracting students, and most have extensive waiting lists.

About 3,300 students in kindergarten-through-12 attend La Jolla public schools; an estimated 1,700 are enrolled in the area’s various private schools, with 60% to 70% of those from the La Jolla area.

“The bottom line for our family has been the small class size, the intimacy and the closeness possible, both with faculty and other parents,” said Karen Michelson, who with her husband Joseph placed their three children at La Jolla Country Day. “We find that each (child) has been able not only to get strong skills development but also to experiment with activities, to use the school differently.”

The Michelsons put their first child in private school after moving to the area in the mid-1970s from Davis, Calif. At that time, many La Jolla parents were upset at the possibility that district integration plans would force La Jolla students to be bused to Southeast San Diego. That never materialized, but the Michelsons nonetheless decided to go with private schools.

“We were so pleased with private schools that it has just seemed logical to stay with Country Day,” Michelson said.

Duane Nellis has his oldest son at The Bishop’s School, which he said provides “intangibles beyond just great academics, individual attention and small class size” for high-achieving students.

Students have a chance to try athletics or other extra-curricular activities in a small setting, and they also are required to perform community service, things not always possible at a public school, Nellis said.

But principals at La Jolla-area public schools, along with many parents, say their campuses increasingly display strong assets in competing with the siren songs of private schools.

At Torrey Pines Elementary, Doyle runs down the list of benefits for children at the school: before-school classes in French, Spanish, art and computers; after-school programs by the YMCA; the city schools’ only full-time elementary librarian; teacher aides and a large cadre of trained parent volunteers in each class to minimize teacher-student ratios; agreements with nearby UC San Diego to tap campus specialists for lectures and field trips; an idyllic setting on a cul-de-sac overlooking the Pacific and interaction between white and Latino children reflecting the real-world future for California residents.

“Parents at Torrey Pines have worked hard to make sure there are both the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic and a lot of enrichment as well,” said Gordon Dunfee, a board member of the Friends of Torrey Pines Foundation. The foundation, a private group with counterparts at all La Jolla schools, raises money to buy computers, books and other items the school district cannot supply.

An upbeat view at Torrey Pines was not the case several years ago, when many parents opted for private schools, upset that the school appeared to have no educational plan for dealing with the influx of Latino students.

With the strengthened curriculum, more neighborhood parents now are willing to buy into the integration program.

Parent Pat Masters said that parent volunteers in each classroom, plus the library’s learning center, take some of the pressure off teachers from having to teach large reading groups, while offering more than basic skills in language arts and math.

“Some of our friends have kids in private schools,” said Masters, a researcher at UCSD. “And because they had great concern about the adequacy of public schools, they urged us to go right to private school from the start.

“But both my husband and I were products of public schools in Iowa and, if everyone pulls their kids out of public school, what are we then contributing to our educational system? Not much.”

Dunfee said, “I think I have an obligation to provide my (four) children with a splash of what real life is about, and public school contains every element of that.”

Doyle notes that eight parents have returned their children to Torrey Pines this year from private academies. In addition, he said, barrio parents tell him that they bus their children to La Jolla schools because they perceive them as akin to private schools.

“I don’t think that private schools can touch us,” Doyle said.

La Jolla Elementary Principal Trudy Campbell said that she had stomachaches several years ago over the need to balance the two goals of equity and academic excellence.

As one major effort, Campbell and her staff introduced merging gifted and non-gifted classes this year in a new program. Under the move, students meet in mixed groups for part of the day, then separate into smaller groups for math, language--English or bilingual--and social studies, which vary in size and ethnicity subject-by-subject depending on ability levels. All the teachers in the two-grade program are certified to teach gifted students as a way to satisfy La Jolla parents who strongly identify with such teachers.

“We’re trying to get away from labeling kids as much as possible while still challenging all of our kids,” said Campbell. In the district’s latest annual report on integration to the Superior Court, it said that eight of 20 classrooms last year at La Jolla Elementary were ethnically unbalanced. That figure, the largest among the district’s 106 elementary schools, reflects those classes where the number of white or nonwhite students falls outside the school’s acceptable range of 30% to 70%.

In another program, Campbell has persuaded 30 parents of kindergarten and first-graders to place their children in bilingual English-Spanish classes, where the English speakers begin to learn Spanish and the Spanish-speaking children have more opportunity to hear English each day from peers. Every other week, these La Jolla children receive all but their math and reading instruction in Spanish.

“So far, we’ve had nothing but good results,” Campbell said of the “buddylingual” experiment.

Martie Rice, a PTA parent at the school, has placed her daughter in the class and said that, “while some always worry that the barrio kids will hurt their kids academically, in almost all cases, it is a fear that is not accurate.

“In my daughter’s class, there are always at least two adults, a teacher and parent volunteer or teacher and aide, and there is a music teacher each week, art teacher and computer teacher.” Much of the special enrichment results from the school’s parent-supported foundation.

But even Rice admits to sweaty palms about sending her older son to Muirlands next year because many students eligible for gifted-level instruction in English and social studies end up in ethnically mixed regular classes. Placement in advanced math and science courses is based on achievement in previous years’ courses, test scores and teacher recommendations.

Many parents have perceived the regular, non-GATE classes as unchallenging because of the wide range of academic abilities among the students, and at a time when those in the highly competitive community first begin to think about college for their children.

But Muirlands would have a tremendous number of classes unbalanced ethnically if it offered GATE-level classes to everyone who qualified. School administrators fear that, if they don’t limit the number of GATE classes, they could end up with the two-tiered education system the public schools must avoid: affluent La Jolla kids, mostly white, in the GATE classes, and inner-city kids, mostly Latino, in the regular classes.

Sue Kalish has one daughter who is a junior at La Jolla High and a second in the eighth grade at Muirlands, both in the GATE program. “They are getting a terrific education, and I can’t imagine a (private school) experience could be any more enriching,” Kalish said.

But, if the enrichment curriculum were unavailable, Kalish would be less enthralled.

“I am not going to put reins on my kids; I don’t want the schools to tell me what kids can’t do,” she said.

Muirlands Principal Allan Peck has a variety of experiments under way to cover the ground for both the 600 resident students and the 300 barrio students in the integration program, with their varied home environments and cultural experiences.

Some high-achieving students who would qualify for GATE-level classes in almost any other city junior high are now offered a special curriculum similar to GATE but without the specific designation.

Teachers in other classes are trying a concept called “differential education,” in which they tell students the different academic requirements for a “C,” a “B,” or an “A” grade, such as the number of books or essays or a creative project required to earn a particular grade. Students are then asked to work at the level they believe is best for them.

“It’s not tracking, it’s not a rigid division” because the students can choose a regular or accelerated level, said Peck, careful to avoid implementing a program that could rigidly result in students separated by ethnicity and bring the wrath of the district’s integration monitors down upon his head.

“Rather, we have found that there is some peer pressure among students to do more . . . to try more creative things than just work sheets and vocabulary kits,” Peck said.

Peck believes the drop-off of La Jolla students between the elementary schools and Muirlands is lessening, saying that the school received about 30 more seventh-graders this fall than expected.

La Jolla High principal J Tarvin, acknowledged as a master both by board member Davis and assistant superintendent Catherine Hopper, promotes his school among uncertain parents by showing them grade-point averages, SAT test scores and the list of universities attended by its 100 top graduates from the previous year.

Names such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Brown, stand out prominently, along with all of the UC campuses. Tarvin brags about the 83% of the 430 graduates last year who attend four-year colleges or universities, and says that a strong majority of his nonwhite students who bus--28% of the school’s 1,150 students--are among the group.

“All classes at La Jolla are open to all students,” Tarvin tells parents. “We do not have GATE as such, we have advanced placement courses, but even our regular courses are college preparatory.

“We absolutely are not competing with other public high schools . . . we are competing with the private schools.”

La Jolla High picks up about 50 students a year at all grade levels, Tarvin said. Some come from Bishop’s and La Jolla Country Day, where about 10% of the ninth-graders at each school decide they want the traditional public high school experience.

La Jolla parent Diana Armstrong, whose son attended the prestigious Horace Mann School in New York City before moving to San Diego, said that La Jolla High “is extraordinary for a public school . . . with an incredible amount of talent and depth . . . a private school without the $7,000 tuition.”