School Honored as Among U.S. Best

A Chatsworth private elementary school where classes are small, students learn Spanish in kindergarten and nature walks are a regular part of the curriculum was the only California private school to win national honors this year from the U.S. Department of Education.

The 400-student Sierra Canyon School, located on six acres at the base of the Santa Susana Mountains, also is the only for-profit school to be among the 221 public and private schools to win the department’s annual Distinguished School Award, said Dorothy Vuksich, deputy regional representative for the Education Department.

“We challenge students,” said Principal Ann Gillinger. “We have a school full of achievers, many reading two to three levels ahead of their grade.”

But, she said, students “do not learn in stressful situations. They learn best in a nurturing environment, and we provide that.”

The school will charge $5,700 annual tuition plus $195 per month for transportation for the 1990-91 academic year. Officials said that 20% of the student body are members of minority groups and 11% attend with the help of full or partial scholarships. The school was notified of its award Friday.

Gillinger said that when she heard the school had won she “ran into each classroom. You would have thought the students had won the Super Bowl. They screamed and waved their fists. Because they knew we had been nominated.”

The school sits next to 36 acres of open land where students take nature walks and study plants, trees, insects and soil. The campus includes an amphitheater, two swimming pools and a small orange tree orchard shading an outdoor area where students eat lunch.

An Education Department spokesman said public and private schools were evaluated on equal criteria, including visionary leadership, academic achievement, parent involvement and programs that challenge students and enable teachers to grow and teach effectively.

But Gillinger said the school has many amenities that are beyond the reach of public schools. Its faculty includes 18 full-time teachers with full-time assistants in addition to specialists in Spanish, music, art, math and science and physical education.

Each time a class goes to a specialist, classroom teachers are freed to hold conferences and prepare lessons.

Gillinger said the school started 12 years ago when Howard Wang, Mick Horwitz and herself--all of whom were public school teachers--decided “that there was a way we would like to do things.”

She said the average class size at the school is 24, which allows students to study in small groups and get extensive individual attention.

In one first-grade class on Monday, redheaded, freckle-faced Derek Snyder, 7, slouched in his chair as he used a computer game to learn to read. Derek didn’t spell influenza-- the word he was studying. In fact, he said, he didn’t even know what it meant. But he wasn’t discouraged.

“I like this game,” he said. “You could learn lots of different words. Most of the time you get stuck. But it’s fun to figure out how you got stuck.”