VENTURA : Alternative Education Expanded

The board of the Ventura Unified School District voted unanimously Tuesday to expand the district’s open-education program at the Blanche Reynolds Elementary School to include sixth-grade students.

The board also voted to form an advisory committee of parents and staff members to examine whether to eventually expand the program to include seventh- and eighth-grade students and to offer the program at a second school for 1991-92.

In the coming year, there will be a maximum of 93 students in the program, which attracts students from all over the city.

The district has offered open education to kindergarten through fifth-grade students for about 15 years, administrators said. There are 16 students on a waiting list to get into the program.

Under the open-education concept, different subjects are taught together throughout the school day. For example, Reynolds students last year studied math, science, literature and history in the course of a class architecture project.

Parents are asked to volunteer for at least 10 hours a month either in class or in fund-raising or cultural events outside the classroom.

Also, students of various grade levels are taught in the same classroom. In the expanded program, teacher Jock Scott, one of the three teachers in the program, will add sixth-grade students to his class, which already includes the fourth and fifth grades.