Santa Paula Schools Battle Image Issue : Education: Parents blame an enrollment exodus on low test scores and reports of gangs. Educators say the criticism is undeserved.

Santa Paula’s 1950s-style neighborhood schools have vanished, and with them, some of the students, parents and real estate brokers say.

In the Santa Paula Elementary School District, the city’s largest, enrollment fell 4% over a two-year period, according to district records. Today 3,164 students attend seven elementary and middle schools, compared with 3,290 three years ago.

During the early part of the decade, Santa Paula schools filled with students as enrollment increased nearly 1.8% a year.

Parents blame the exodus on low test scores, poor academic standards and reports of gangs in the town’s only middle school.

“We’ve had people move to Camarillo to avoid the schools,” said Roylene Cunningham, a parent and chairwoman of a school advisory committee.

School officials say the public schools’ bad image is undeserved. They blame slow municipal growth and an aging population for a smaller pool of students.

“There are parents in this community who are saying the schools are unfit,” school board President Janet Grant said. “But I don’t think that Santa Paula schools deserve the reputation that they have.”

Santa Paula Elementary School District Supt. Dave Philips has called for a study on why students are leaving.

The district has tried to improve instruction by offering classes for gifted Spanish-speaking students, as well as special literature and reading courses for both English and Spanish speakers to help them learn in a bilingual environment.

So far enrollment appears to be rising slightly compared with last year, but officials fear further declines.

Falling enrollment would “affect personnel and mean reductions,” Philips said. “It makes things a little tighter.”

Officials are restricting transfers to other Santa Paula school districts, a move they say will keep a desegregation program intact. Elementary students attend four districts in Santa Paula, including Santa Paula, Briggs, Mupu and Santa Clara school districts.

The decline in enrollment has caused budget cuts, since state financing is based on the number of students enrolled in the district. Over the past two years, the district has lost about $437,000 in state money. Nine teachers were laid off in July.

The exodus of students has also hurt the city, Santa Paula Mayor Kay Wilson said.

Wilson, a real estate agent, said the decline has affected businesses and Santa Paula’s image as a good place to live.

Out-of-town buyers query real estate agents carefully, she said.

“We get asked two questions: ‘Are your schools really as bad as we’ve heard?’ And ‘How far is it to private school?’ ” Wilson said.

She said some buyers purchase residences in Santa Paula for its serene rural environment, only to send their children to schools in Ventura and Camarillo.

One of those out-of-town buyers was Christine Quitmeyer, 35, a part-time accountant at a dental office. For her, the Santa Paula elementary school system was a lesson in disappointment.

Three years ago, Quitmeyer moved from Las Cruces, N.M., to Ventura County in search of a quiet, rural atmosphere to raise her son, David. She settled on Santa Paula after being impressed by the town’s quaint tree-lined streets.

But after her son attended eighth grade at Isbell Middle School, Quitmeyer’s opinion changed.

“Kids would say they were in a different gang and could not play together. Half the kids couldn’t speak English,” Quitmeyer said. She enrolled David in a private Christian school.

The majority of non-English-speaking pupils is one reason Santa Paula students have tested substantially lower in reading, writing and math than their peers in other school districts, school officials say.

Latinos make up 72% of the elementary students in Santa Paula schools. Whites make up less than 16% of the students.

Former school board member Bob Borrego, now a candidate for the Santa Paula City Council, said test scores have always been low, because many students come from poor farm worker and immigrant families and have limited education.

The school district has the second-highest concentration of migrant students in the county. Fillmore has the largest.

“As far back as I can remember, people in the administration have been lamenting low test scores,” Borrego said.

In 1988-89, the last year for which figures were available, reading scores dipped for the three grades tested under the California Assessment Program compared with the previous year. Math scores also dipped for two grades the same year.

It was the first decline for third-graders, whose reading scores had improved slightly in previous years. For sixth- and eighth-graders, it was the second time in four years that scores had dropped.

Past test scores had placed Santa Paula pupils in the lowest 2% in the state.

Scores in 1988-89 were affected by a major shake-up that changed boundaries and transfers that involved 52% of the teaching staff, Philips said.

Aging school buildings, staff turnover and limited resources have brought scores down in past years, Borrego said. He sat on a school board committee that recommended changes that led to the many bitter complaints parents have today.

Two years ago, neighborhood schools where students had attended up to the third grade were changed to kindergarten through fifth grade. A separate middle school at Isbell was created to handle sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

The district also imposed a voluntary desegregation program that created magnet schools that offered special academic programs, such as computer and science, open classrooms and bilingual programs.

Magnet schools were supposed to help the district integrate schools by offering special academic programs at schools where Spanish-speaking students made up the majority. But it also angered parents.

“They look at the magnet schools as their great white hope,” said Karen Cottingham, 31, a parent and former president of the parent-teacher club at Glen City School. “But I don’t see people coming from across town to come to Glen City to learn Spanish.”

Parents say Isbell Middle School is plagued by rumors of gangs, fights and poor instruction.

One Latino father, who asked not to be identified, said he preferred to have his sixth-grade daughter go to St. Sebastian Catholic School rather than attend Isbell.

“She was sort of afraid to go there because of the little stories that get out about gang-related situations that had happened in the past,” he said.

After meeting with Isbell teachers, the father said he was disappointed that his daughter would have had to repeat material she had already learned.

Quitmeyer said she had the same complaint about the classes her son took at Isbell.

“What they learned in seventh grade in New Mexico, they learned in eighth grade here,” she said.

Supt. Philips attributed some of the complaints to overambitious parents who want their children to learn advanced material beyond their grade level. “There are certain reasons where you might want to practice a skill a parent may see as repetitive.”

Aside from three minor scuffles at Isbell, there has been none of the violence rumored about the school, Philips said. This year, enrollment has climbed by 41 students, he said.

Cathy Metelak, whose child attended private school for two years before transferring to Isbell school, agreed with Philips’ assessment. She said she initially objected to sending her daughter to Isbell, where she was concerned that her daughter would encounter gangs.

“It’s been totally the opposite. She fits in very well and socially has no problems. I talked to parents who have their kids in Ventura schools, and they have the same problems we have.”

Despite her criticism of the school system, Cunningham said her three children have done well in the public schools.

“I feel like that’s the real world,” she said. “My husband went to a Catholic school. I think he agrees with me that if our kids are going to get along in this world, they need to live in this world.”

Santa Paula School District Enrollment Enrollment at 4th week of school 1979-80/’81-82: 2,853 ‘87-88: 3,290 Source: Santa Paula Elem. School District