Students Returning to Public Schools : Education: Tough times are forcing families out of private institutions. They are finding Valley campuses with good records.

With a baby whose medical bills were costing thousands and the recession cutting into their resources, June and Michael Byrd of Tujunga realized something had to give. The vulnerable spot in the family ledger was the $310 they shelled out monthly to send their two older children to a local parochial school.

“We had no choice,” June Byrd said. “We just could not afford private school anymore. My husband’s self-employed . . . He’s a tile contractor, and times are tough.”

Last month, the couple joined the ranks of scores of parents across the San Fernando Valley who have transferred their youngsters from private or parochial campuses to one of the Valley’s 177 public schools. With their pocketbooks pinched by the recession, these parents have found financial relief by returning to the public school fold, despite misgivings that initially drove them away.

Overall statistics recording the movement of students from private to public schools, or vice versa, in the greater Los Angeles area do not exist.

But many Valley public school officials report a higher-than-usual enrollment this year of students previously in private institutions. And many private schools, though leery of advertising any exodus, concede that the economic malaise of the last three years has taken its toll.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials attribute the rise in returnees not just to the recession but also to a rediscovery of individual public schools--often in affluent southern and western Valley communities--that have built up solid track records of academic achievement and parental involvement.

In those cases “people are realizing that their local public school is . . . not just a pretty good school but a very good school,” said Associate Supt. Sara A. Coughlin, who oversees the Valley’s 131 elementary schools. “And in the same way, they think, ‘Why am I spending $8,000 a year?’ ”

“Economics is a large portion of it,” said Melanie Deutsch, principal of Dixie Canyon Avenue Elementary School in Sherman Oaks. But “a lot of parents are seeing that what they’re paying money for at private schools they can have at public schools.”

Deutsch estimates that about 50 children this year at Dixie Canyon, which boasts a well-regarded arts and music program, are newly enrolled private school students.

Nearby, at Carpenter Street Elementary School in Studio City, Principal Joan Marks also puts the number at 50, well over the number of past years. And school officials from Woodland Hills to North Hollywood say private school returnees are exceeding those of the past by a handful to dozens.

The parents are almost always an assertive lot, unafraid to get involved in their children’s education by interviewing administrators and teachers and visiting more than just one campus, officials say.

“We call them shoppers. When they value education, they take the time to find out,” said Marian Fortunati, principal at Serrania Avenue Elementary School, a Woodland Hills campus that is home to 20 to 30 pupils who last year received private schooling.

Although the majority of Los Angeles public school students attend neighborhood campuses, others can get permission to enroll elsewhere under certain conditions or can apply to special programs.

“I’ve had many conferences with new parents,” Deutsch said. “And we’ve had a new parent orientation where they’ve been able to ask questions . . . about the transition from private to public.”

Officials said parents ask about class sizes, about help for their children in adjusting to their new school and about the ways they can help their children do well in class.

Many parents who have pulled their children from private institutions still worry about the urban ills and the lack of funding that drove them from public education in the first place.

The budgetary concerns were amplified by this year’s state budget crisis, which will require the Los Angeles school district to cut its $3.9-billion budget by $400 million this year. But district officials are proposing to make up most of that shortfall by cutting employees’ salaries and by reducing administrative expenses to avoid scaling back academic programs.

Cipy Baron, whose fourth-grade son now attends John B. Monlux Elementary School in North Hollywood, said the decision to enroll 9-year-old Gil in a public school frayed her nerves.

“I was so scared,” Baron said. “I couldn’t sleep nights. Everything you hear about the public schools, you hear nothing but bad things.”

She began scouting possible public schools for her son months ago, when she and her husband realized they could no longer afford sending both Gil and his older brother to a local Jewish day school which cost $9,000 annually per child. The weakened economy has reduced the number of customers for her electrolysis business and her husband, Mike, is getting less work as an electrician.

“It’s unbearably expensive,” Baron said. “We’re always joking that our checkbook has more entries for the private school than anything else.”

Her son qualified for a spot in Monlux’s magnet program, which emphasizes fundamental skills such as reading and writing. Baron’s praise for the school is effusive as she describes teachers who are “very caring” and administrators who are highly responsive to her needs as a new parent.

Magnet programs like Monlux’s, which offer specialized studies, have traditionally drawn private school students back into the public school fold. Of the district’s 105 magnets, which include programs in areas such as medicine, fine arts, law and government, 28 are in the Valley, including two just opened this year.

At North Hollywood’s James Madison Middle School, for example, officials estimate that of the 200 students in its brand-new math and science magnet, perhaps as many as 20 attended private and parochial schools last year.

The private institutions themselves are reluctant to release information perceived as unfavorable. Many report stable enrollments with low turnover rates and waiting lists, although requests for financial assistance have increased, according to Mimi Baer, executive director of the California Assn. of Independent Schools.

The organization includes small religious schools as well as such posh establishments as Harvard-Westlake in Studio City and the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, where tuition and fees often run into five figures.

“Schools are trying to make it possible for families that are experiencing layoffs or unemployment to keep their kids in the schools if they can,” Baer said. “And some parents are cutting back in other areas so that their children can go to the school--not going on the family winter vacation, staying with the old car, whatever it is.”

But many private school officials acknowledge that they have not escaped the recession’s grip.

“You’re just in the wrong area at the wrong time. You can’t help it,” said Don L. Dye, business administrator for the Pinecrest schools, which has 13 campuses in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys. Tuition at a Pinecrest school runs about $4,200 a year.

Enrollment at campuses in Canyon Country, Lancaster and Palmdale is lagging, despite sparkling new facilities and innovative programs, Dye said.

“Not an if, not a doubt, I can tell you it’s the recession,” he said.

“We had a withdrawal the other day. The child is in sixth grade, and they’ve been in since nursery school,” Dye said. The father is “an engineer . . . But he said, ‘I have no money.’ ”

Religiously affiliated schools have apparently been stung by the recession more than tony private institutions. In upper-crust institutions such as Harvard-Westlake or Viewpoint School in Calabasas, new students are anxious to move from the waiting list to replace those who leave.

Even where enrollments have remained steady, however, campuses report doling out more in scholarships.

“Between the recession, . . . and people losing their jobs, and the riots, it’s really hit bad,” said George Lebovitz, headmaster at Kadima Hebrew Academy in Woodland Hills. “Our scholarships this year are up 40%.

Bill Rivera, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said several Catholic schools in the Valley say more students are being subsidized and some parents are slow to pay fees, which range from $1,800 for elementary schools to $4,400 for high schools per year.

Tuition at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Day School, an Episcopal school in Canoga Park, is $3,000 annually. Enrollment has actually increased slightly from 155 children last year to 162 currently, but the turnover rate was 10%, “which is a lot for us,” Headmaster James Maronde said.

“We’ve had families leaving to follow their jobs; we have families who are close to foreclosure hanging onto their homes” by eliminating tuition payments from their budgets, he said.

“As I’ve talked to some of my colleagues, they’ve all shared some of the same frustrations in retaining enrollment levels, and it all seems recession-related,” said Marlin Miller, principal of First Lutheran School in Van Nuys.

In the midst of the economic downturn, the public schools have not been idle: Some officials are trying to capitalize on what they see as an opportunity to woo back the disaffected. Several Valley principals say they have appeared at community information sessions that usually feature only private school administrators to tout their campuses.

At Mountain View Elementary School in Tujunga, where June and Michael Byrd placed their two older children after a stint at a Catholic school, Principal Joellyn Siraganian has distributed flyers in the neighborhood trying to attract parents suffering from the “recession blues.”

“We just wrote up a very simplistic flyer in English, Spanish and Armenian,” Siraganian said. “We were writing it from that viewpoint that here is a very lovely school with a loving and nurturing staff with exciting programs, and we’re a free public school.”

Many erstwhile private school parents agree that the public schools have satisfied their high standards. Some even feel their new schools outclass their private counterparts.

As a public school teacher herself, Marcia Meyerstein of Chatsworth insisted on watching teachers in action at Superior Street Elementary School before withdrawing her daughter from an upscale private school. She came away impressed.

“I saw the most dynamic teacher I’ve ever seen in my life,” Meyerstein said.

“You do get tired of paying for an education twice,” she said. “You pay for it with your taxes, and you pay for it privately.”

Although she and her husband could still have afforded private schooling, they chose not to and now Danielle is enrolled at Superior Street.

“I’ll tell you what,” Marcia Meyerstein said. “It’s wonderful not to pay that bill.”