School Dropout Rate Improves in 1991 : Education: Continuing a trend, the county figure dips to 10.7%. But the Santa Paula and Oxnard districts had dramatic increases.

Ventura County’s high school dropout rate continues to decline, according to state figures released Thursday.

But two districts--Santa Paula and Oxnard Union high school districts--saw dramatic increases in the number of students who dropped out in 1991 compared to 1990, according to the state Department of Education’s annual dropout report.

Of Ventura County’s nine districts, Ventura Unified and Moorpark Unified showed the biggest improvements in dropout rates in 1991, compared with 1990.

The overall rate for all the districts in the county declined from 10.9% in 1990 to 10.7% in 1991, the report said. In 1986, the first year figures were tallied, the county’s rate was 17.1%. The county has 26 regular and continuation high schools.

“Ventura (County), as a group, has consistently been below the state average,” said James Fulton, a state education department spokesman. “It’s a massive effort to change (the rate) a few points.”

More than 22% of the students in grades 10 through 12 in the Santa Paula Union High School District left school during the 1990-91 school year, earning that school district the highest dropout rate in the county, the report said. Santa Paula’s rate for the previous year was only 13.7%.

Santa Paula Union High School Principal Robert Fisher disputed the figures, saying he believes the number of dropouts in his district actually has fallen.

“We’re making a real major push to keep these students here,” Fisher said.

Santa Paula school officials, he said, have focused on keeping students who are considered dropout risks and on luring dropouts back into the classroom.

For example, the district has added a program that keeps suspended students in a separate classroom during their suspensions rather than sending them out onto the streets.

“You can lose kids in two to three days,” he said. Starting in May, he added, the district will hold weekly group sessions where students can meet with counselors to talk about family and school problems.

By the state’s definition, a dropout is a student in grades 10 through 12 who did not attend school for 45 consecutive days and did not notify officials of any transfer, Fulton said.

School officials at both the state and local levels said teen-age pregnancy is a major contributor to the dropout rate, as are economic factors that drive students to quit school and go to work.

Some students are discouraged by lack of parental interest or what may seem like an overwhelming number of units needed to graduate, said Ian Kirkpatrick, superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District.

The Oxnard Union district’s dropout rate surged from 6.2% for the 1990 class to 12.5% for the class of 1991, the report said.

Kirkpatrick said he was not pleased to hear about the rate jump but that his district will step up efforts to attack the problem. “We need to do more,” he said.

Attempts to prevent some older students from dropping out by offering them independent study have not been successful, he said. As a result, officials are concentrating on ninth-graders, he said.

The Oxnard Union district is trying to identify at-risk ninth-graders--those with poor attendance records or who are falling behind in course work--so that they can receive counseling or be placed into special programs to keep them on a graduation track, he said.

Similar efforts were credited by officials at the Ventura and Moorpark districts for their lower dropout rates.

“We’re paying a lot of attention to at-risk kids,” Moorpark’s assistant superintendent, Charles L. Smith, said. “I think we might have turned the corner.”

Smith cited the district’s push to keep pregnant students working toward graduation in the independent study program, as well as efforts to get at-risk youths into the continuation high school program. In that program, students can attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and work after school if they choose.

“We were concentrating on what happened with our students,” said Arline Miro, director of administrative services for Ventura Unified. She said the district has kept closer track of dropouts to try to entice them back to school.

As a result, officials helped place some potential dropouts in alternative programs and helped place others who left school into adult schools, she said. In adult school, she said, students work toward an objective rather than earn a course credit, so that they can finish a class much sooner.

“And most of them do,” she said.

Ventura County’s continued overall decline in the dropout rate mirrors a statewide trend, according to the state report. California’s overall rate fell from 20.1% for the class of 1990 to 18.2% for the 1991 class--still above the 10% goal the state aims to reach by the year 2000.

Dropout Rates

Figures for Ventura County released Thursday by the state Department of Education.

% of 1986 % of 1990 % of 1991 of 1991 District class class class dropouts Conejo Valley Unified 4.7 5.4 5.4 76 Fillmore Unified 11.3 7.9 6.1 14 Moorpark Unified 30.5 16.3 8.5 23 Oak Park Unified 6.8 5.2 2.7 3 Ojai Unified 19.7 23.7 18.9 38 Oxnard Union High 30.1 6.2 12.5 331 Santa Paula Union High 27.7 13.7 22.2 71 Simi Valley Unified 10.6 14.3 12.1 173 Ventura Unified 9.4 13.8 4.7 50 County total 17.1 10.9 10.7 839

STATEWIDE: Dropout rate is below 20% for the first time since 1986. A3