HUNTINGTON BEACH : School Integration Plan Elicits Concern

Parents of Latino students at Oak View Elementary School are questioning whether a district desegregation plan will curtail bilingual programs and services aimed at helping students from low-income families.

Some of the 150 parents who attended an Oak View community meeting for Spanish-speaking residents Thursday said they feared that integration might subject their children to racial discrimination by their Anglo schoolmates.

Still, many parents said they support the plan, which the Board of Trustees will consider at a May 14 public hearing.

Ocean View School District officials, Oak View administrators and Latino activists from the neighborhood said they are working together to meet the challenges posed by the integration plan.

The proposal is intended to achieve racial balance at every school in the district. Two schools out of 17--Crest View Elementary School and Oak View--have a disproportionate share of the district’s ethnic minorities.

The plan would close Crest View, restructure Oak View and create a 175-student magnet program that would feature elective courses not offered elsewhere in the district. Officials hope that the magnet program will attract Anglo students to Oak View, where 89% of the current enrollment is Latino, Vietnamese or from other ethnic minorities.

To make way for the voluntary magnet program, 240 of the school’s 660 students would be transferred to nearby schools. To correct the school’s racial imbalance, nearly all of the incoming magnet students would be Anglo, district officials said. The special magnet programs would also be offered to Oak View’s remaining students.

Oak View officials and activists in the predominantly Latino neighborhood endorse the plan despite the fact that minority students at other schools will initially be barred from participating in the magnet courses.

Oak View Elementary School serves as a social-service hub for the community, offering intensive bilingual courses, an orientation program for recent immigrants and free or low-cost meals. Parents said they are skeptical that those programs can be transferred to other schools as promised by district officials.

“You have made many promises,” one parent told district officials. “Will these things that you promise continue all the time, or only for a few months?”

Paul Mercier, the district’s assistant superintendent for educational services, responded: “Not only do we want to, but we feel we are required to, if we’re going to give your students and all students in the district a good education.”