School Board OKs Desegregation Plan to Span City Lines : Education: The goal of the three-year program is to help bridge the socioeconomic gulf between La Mirada and Norwalk.

Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District officials have embarked on an ambitious desegregation program.

The plan would include magnet schools, special student projects and summer programs aimed at getting youths to voluntarily cross the city lines between Norwalk and La Mirada.

“We see this as a plan to give kids an opportunity to meet other kids,” said school board member Rudy Bermudez. “There are people who have never ventured out of their communities. This is just a means to expose kids to other kids in the district.”

The school board recently approved the plan, which was two years in the making, by a 7-0 vote.

Although the plan does not describe how all of these programs will be funded, proponents insist that school desegregation must be a top priority. School administrators said they hope the programs will bridge the gap between schools that are as different as the two cities they serve.

According to 1990 census figures, La Mirada is about two-thirds Anglo and Norwalk about two-thirds minority. In 1990, 82.4% of the residents in La Mirada owned their homes, compared to 65% in Norwalk. The median income for La Mirada residents was $47,123, compared to $38,124 in Norwalk.

Norwalk schools tend to have a higher percentage of minorities, a higher dropout rate and lower scores on achievement tests than La Mirada schools.

In two Norwalk elementary schools--Sanchez and Edmondson--minority enrollment exceeds 95%, mostly Latino. In La Mirada, Foster Road Elementary School has the highest minority enrollment at 75%.

The student dropout rate at La Mirada High School was 2.9% in 1990-91, much lower than at the two high schools in Norwalk. The dropout rate was 16.3% at Norwalk High and 9.5% at Glenn High.

Eighth-graders at La Mirada High also outperformed students at Norwalk and Glenn on the California Assessment Program writing tests in 1989-90, the last year that the tests were given. La Mirada eighth-graders ranked 57th on a scale in which a 99 was the highest. Glenn students ranked 26th, and Norwalk students ranked 21st.

The marriage of Norwalk and La Mirada schools into one unified district has never been perfect. Periodically, board members must deal with discontented parents who claim that schools in the other city are getting a larger share of district resources.

Supt. Robert Aguilar said that misunderstanding is nurtured through the lack of contact and the socioeconomic gulf between the two cities. He said he hopes the desegregation plan will diffuse any possible underlying tensions among parents, students or faculty.

“Look at what happened at L.A. Unified,” said Aguilar, referring to recent outbreaks of violence in some Los Angeles schools. “Why should we wait until that happens, when we can do something about it now?

“We have a lot of gangs in Norwalk, the problems are evident,” he said. “We want kids to stay away from that. This kind of program will lead to that.”

Aguilar said he hopes the program will allow students to gain self-respect as well as “learning to respect each other’s differences. The idea is to become a unified school district.”

The first phase of the three-year plan is scheduled to begin in April, said Marie Plakos, the district administrator who prepared the desegregation report.

Students will be selected from one elementary school in Norwalk and another in La Mirada and asked to submit ideas for a project that would improve the community.

The students from the two schools would mingle on Saturdays and sometimes during and after school. Besides meeting in person, students would communicate via computer once electronic links have been set up.

These projects would allow students from different schools to work together while learning science, math and other subjects, Plakos said.

In the summer, the district hopes to start a four-week academic session involving students from different schools. In the first two weeks, students would focus on learning about their communities, including city government, demographics and recycling plans. In the last half, students would participate in community projects and take field trips to municipal facilities such as a water treatment plant.

Plakos said the district would provide transportation for students. But school officials have not yet determined which schools or how many students will be eligible for these programs.

Eventually, magnet schools with special programs that are typically designed to attract Anglo students to high minority schools and vice versa would be set up throughout the district.

Over the next year, the district plans to spend about $1.8 million on the special projects and the summer program. Administrators said the state typically pays for about 80% of voluntary integration programs, or about $1.4 million in this case.

The Norwalk-La Mirada board has voted to pay up to $12,000 to a Sacramento-based consulting firm, Larson & Associates, to help obtain state funding for the plan.

Board member Bermudez said the cost of the plan could force the district to juggle dollars. The district is currently developing a multimillion-dollar plan to open middle schools during a time when officials expect state funding to decline.

“How many programs can we continue to develop and incur continuing costs?” Bermudez said.

Yet Plakos remains optimistic: “Voluntary integration has remained a priority of the state,” she said.