5 Schools Give Pupils and Parents Hard Work : Education: Old-fashioned and public, they stress discipline, academic rigor and proper attire. Nearly 600 children are on waiting lists at just two of them.

Eileen and Bob Wyckhuyse of Simi Valley have seven children, the youngest born just last week.

Four of their children, all elementary-school age, attend the Hollow Hills Fundamental School in Simi Valley--by their parents’ choice. Each school day last year, Eileen Wyckhuyse and a neighbor traded car-pooling duties, driving 2 1/2 miles each way and bypassing two neighborhood elementary schools to get to Hollow Hills.

It’s worth the trouble, said Wyckhuyse, 33, because Hollow Hills is a “fundamental school,” an old-fashioned, back-to-basics public school that stresses discipline, high academic expectations, a strict dress code and daily homework assignments--even for kindergarten students.

“I felt that, overall, my kids would be going to a school with other children whose parents are really concerned about their education,” Wyckhuyse said. “I think the atmosphere is almost like a private school.”

Hollow Hills and Vista elementary schools in the Simi Valley Unified School District are among five such fundamental public schools in Ventura County, where teachers and parents talk a lot about responsibility, accountability, and holding students to higher standards than those found at most other schools.

The concept is not new or unique. Fundamental schools proliferated in the early 1980s after a report from the National Commission on Excellence in Education criticized the public school system for fostering “a rising tide of mediocrity.”

Unlike “magnet schools” established in some districts, Simi Valley’s fundamental schools are not aimed at the intellectually gifted or those who want to specialize in a particular subject. According to parent handbooks for Vista and Hollow Hills, the schools have “only two reasons to exist . . . to provide a more rigorous educational program . . . and to hold a higher level of expectation for all involved--educators, students and parents.”

“It’s not the right school for everybody,” said Hollow Hills Principal Susan Parks. “Part of our focus is to be more academic, but with the kinds of rigorous things we do, like homework every day, even when it’s really simple it’s too much for some kids. Other kids really thrive.”

Apparently, many parents in Simi Valley believe such schools are right for their children.

The names of nearly 600 Simi Valley children are on waiting lists to get into Hollow Hills and Vista for the next school year. About 200 of those names are on waiting lists for the kindergarten programs, school officials said.

“It seems to be a very popular concept with parents,” said Vista Principal Sheila Robbins. Like the students, teachers and administrators must request to be placed at a fundamental school.

“It’s unique because everybody who is here wants to be here,” said Robbins, who recently completed her first year at Vista after serving as principal at other Simi Valley schools for the past 10 years.

Funding and curriculum are the same as for traditional schools in the district. But fundamental teachers said they often do more with what they have, covering more ground and getting higher standardized test scores than at other schools.

At Vista, for example, scores on the California Test of Basic Skills are typically in the 80th to 90th percentile range, depending on the grade level, while average scores statewide are between the 40th and 50th percentile, Robbins said.

The Simi Valley fundamental programs were started in 1982, after parents demanded a more rigorous, basic education program. Initially, children were enrolled on a first-come, first-served basis, but when parents started camping out overnight to get their children enrolled in kindergarten, the district started a computer lottery to determine who gets in.

Parents must sign a contract stating that they will abide by school requirements for parents, including reviewing and signing homework assignment sheets daily.

This year, parent Doug Stevens said, his son Devon, 5, a kindergartner, brought work home Mondays through Thursdays. For homework, kindergarten students had to ask their parents to read to them for 20 minutes, or solve word puzzles, or cut out magazine pictures of objects that all began with the same letter.

Stevens said he doesn’t mind that some assignments are easy.

“They’re only 5 years old, and I’m not for pushing them too hard,” Stevens said. “This is their first year away from home.”

Hollow Hills PTA President Gail Bennett was on a waiting list for six months before the first of her three children who have attended the school was admitted. Once a child gets in, his siblings get enrollment priority.

“I heard they were a structured school, and I believe in homework and the basics,” said Bennett, 50, who drives seven miles each way to bring her children to Hollow Hills. “Kids need structure and responsibility. My other child was in a regular school, and they had no homework. It makes a difference. It shows.”

Parent Grace Lu agrees. However, her son Timothy is still on the waiting list to get into Vista. He has been waiting a year already, and there are 61 students ahead of him.

Although Timothy, 7, attended kindergarten at Vista, Lu and her husband, Rex, transferred him to an even stricter private Christian school in Canoga Park when he started having disciplinary problems in class, Lu said.

Now, the Lus are trying to get Timothy back into Vista. Grace Lu said the wait is particularly frustrating because they live a block from the school.

“He’s doing better now,” she said, “but I feel he could learn better at Vista, so we want him back in.”

In the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District, there are fundamental or “structured” programs at three schools, Dos Caminos, Los Primeros and Bedford, an “open school” on the campus of El Descanso School.

Dos Caminos Principal Al Lane said half his school is devoted to a fundamental program. There are usually fewer than 10 students per grade on the waiting list for enrollment, he said.

Occasionally, school officials said, the fundamental program does not work for some students. Sometimes the daily homework assignments prove too much, or a student finds the atmosphere too restrictive, or a student is not meeting the school’s standard for passing on to the next grade. In those cases, students may transfer back to normal programs.

Even students who stay in fundamental schools say that keeping up with the workload can make extracurricular pursuits difficult.

Jenifer Bennett, a fifth-grade student at Hollow Hills, said she has to squeeze in homework between dance and gymnastics classes twice a week. “It makes it harder to do other activities,” said Jenifer, 10, who transferred to Hollow Hills after attending kindergarten at another school.

But, she added: “Even though it’s harder in some ways, I think you learn more. I think it’s a better school.”