Board May Expand Alternative Learning : Schools: The program in which children are given evaluations instead of grades may be expanded to sixth grade on a trial basis.

The board of the Ventura Unified School District is considering whether to expand the district’s open education program, an alternative program that encourages parents to help out in the classroom.

The expansion for the Blanche Reynolds Elementary School was proposed by the school’s Open Education Parent Assn., which represents the 90 students in the program.

Children in the school’s open education program do not receive letter grades. Instead, they receive written reports on whether they are working at their grade level, or working above or below it.

Also, students of different grades and age groups are taught together. Although some board members have expressed concern about having older children at an elementary school site, parents and teachers in the program say that is one of its advantages.

“For us it’s been an excellent experience,” said Kathy Ellis, a former teacher whose three children have attended the program. “It’s really an option for parents.”

At a time when some parents and administrators favor a back-to-basics approach, Ellis and other Ventura parents praise open education--a reform born in the 1960s--as a valuable alternative for some students.

Berta Hurley, co-chairman of the parent group, said her son Ryan, 11, has been in the program since February. She said Ryan has dyslexia and has benefited greatly from the program’s noncompetitive environment in just a few months.

“Had I found out about it sooner, my son would have been in from kindergarten,” said Hurley, whose son transferred to the program from the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

The board will decide tonight whether to expand the kindergarten through fifth-grade program at Reynolds to include sixth-grade students on a trial basis.

The board will also vote on whether to form a committee to consider eventually expanding the program to include seventh- and eighth-grade students, and whether to move it to an as yet undetermined school site.

Hurley’s son would be one of four or five sixth-grade students if the program expansion is approved.

There is a list of about 16 students waiting to get in the program, Reynolds Principal Jeffrey Davies said.

In Ventura County, open education is also offered at the Bedford Open School in Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley School District, where about 215 students, or half the school, are in the program.

And the Thelma B. Bedell Elementary School in the Santa Paula Elementary School District offers the program to about 160 students, or 40% of the school.

Administrators at both schools said there are waiting lists to get in.

Roni Adams, formerly an English teacher at Ventura High School whose three children went through the program, said she believes in open education so strongly that she transferred to Reynolds, where she will be one of three teachers this fall.

At Reynolds, parents are asked to spend about 10 hours a month working in the classroom or in other areas like fund raising and organizing cultural events.

Ellis, for example, said she spends one long lunch hour a week helping out in the classroom, and Hurley said she volunteers for at least an hour every afternoon.

One goal of open education is to combine different subjects during the school day. In an architecture project at Blanche Reynolds last year, for example, students used math to draw up blueprints and literature to write stories about who might live in the building.

For that project, parents, including an architect, an electrician and a plumber, addressed students.

In Ventura, teachers and parents say the open education concept fits in with the current educational trend of school-based management, which gives parents a greater opportunity to help determine how schools are run.

“The big trend now is community interaction and parent choice, and that’s a fundamental issue with this proposal,” said teacher Jock Scott.

Scott, who has taught in the program for six years, said it allows him to work with the same children over a two- or three-year period, allows the older children to serve as models for the younger ones, and gives him close contact with parents.

“What’s essential to educating kids is reaching their parents,” Scott said. “That’s difficult to do in a regular classroom.”