Blue Ribbon Schools Win Prize for Muscle : When Congress halts program funding, staff and students fight back.

It is a lesson in American government that students of St. Thomas Elementary School in Los Angeles, like thousands of others nationwide, are not likely to forget.

For several weeks this winter, scores of schools, including St. Thomas, stood up to Congress, the Department of Education, the White House and a host of other government agencies over a congressional decision to halt funding for the coveted Blue Ribbon Schools Recognition Award.

And now it looks as though they have won.

In the short term, the victory means the Department of Education will step in with enough money to complete the selection process already begun for this year’s awards.

Over the long term, the victory means that after all, “The little guy can make a dent in government. . . . People do have power,” one teacher said.

BACKGROUND: As they have for nine years, hundreds of public and private schools across the country applied for the department’s prestigious Blue Ribbon Schools Recognition Award.

The awards--about 250 of which will be bestowed by the department this year--actually are certificates of excellence and achievement.

While the schools receive no money in connection with the award itself, the honor has been known to trigger private donations from individuals, corporations and proud communities.

When Notre Dame Academy, a private girls high school in Sherman Oaks, won a Blue Ribbon award last year, for example, it received thousands of unsolicited dollars from private contributors.

In addition, major colleges and universities stepped up their recruitment of Notre Dame seniors, Principal Sister Gina Marie said.

But the most lasting and important effect of the award, she said, is that “everyone walks just a little bit taller.”

Almost all of the federal money that was requested, denied and now reinstated for the program pays for reviewing the applications and sending evaluators to visit the schools.

When Congress late last year abruptly decided to spend the $885,000 elsewhere, the award selection process--which culminates in September--already had begun for 1992.

“It was a tremendous slap in the face,” said Dan Horn, principal of St. Thomas Elementary, one of the 500 schools nominated and a finalist for the honor.

Like many inner-city schools, St. Thomas--a Roman Catholic school in Los Angeles’ Pico-Union neighborhood--has had more than its share of setbacks.

So far this school year alone, St. Thomas has been burglarized, the PTA president’s car was stolen from a school lot, the library was damaged by seeping sewage and gunfire erupted nearby while the second-graders were at recess.

In just one week, the community around St. Thomas witnessed six funerals, five of them for young people killed in drive-by shootings.

But St. Thomas prides itself in its ability to overcome obstacles. Virtually all of its students beat the odds and go to high school, where almost all graduate.

RESPONSE: Devastated by the discontinuation of the awards program, the staff at St. Thomas fought back. Their efforts became a rallying cry for other schools as well.

Horn, nine teachers and their 312 students launched a crusade against Washington. They flooded the offices of Congress, the Department of Education, and even the White House, with phone calls and letters.

It was not just the recognition they sought, said sixth-grade teacher Terese Atzen, but the satisfaction of completing a process in which they had invested enormous time and energy.

St. Thomas enlisted staff members, parents, students and even a local policeman to help fill out the 37-page application for the Blue Ribbon award.

They hoped the award would bring not only recognition but more private donations that would allow the school to expand into the convent next door, doubling its eight-room building.

When word of the brouhaha reached him, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander began his own letter-writing campaign.

He contacted Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the subcommittee on labor, health and human services and education, and committee member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.); as well as House Appropriations Committee members Reps. William H. Natcher (D-Ky.) and Carl D. Pursell (R-Mich.), asking them to find a way to reinstate the Blue Ribbon program.

David P. Mack, director of the program for the Department of Education, said: “We think it’s just a small program that got overlooked. . . . It’s clearly valuable, especially for the cost” of $885,000--less than 1% of the entire Department of Education’s annual budget.

Alexander has now said he will allocate funding for the Blue Ribbon Awards from the $100-million Educational Excellence appropriation, which will allow the program to continue this year. With the approval of Congress, now seen as likely, the awards will be bestowed on schedule in the fall, with ceremonies in early 1993.