The Winning Formula of Oak Hills : Education: Though relatively new, it is named a National Blue Ribbon School. It enjoys heavy parent involvement, high-tech equipment and the ambience of a private campus.

Oak Hills Elementary School in Oak Park didn’t exist five years ago. Now it is one of the best schools in the nation.

The U.S. Department of Education recently named Oak Hills a National Blue Ribbon School, one of 19 elementary schools in California and 228 nationwide to win the award for the 1991-92 school year. It became Ventura County’s fifth Blue Ribbon school.

“When I got the word, I was jumping up and down,” said Oak Park Unified School District Supt. Susan Hearn. “I was so proud I couldn’t stand it.”

Hearn, who is retiring April 1, won a Blue Ribbon in 1984 as principal of Boren Middle School in San Mateo.

“The recognition of being a Blue Ribbon school distinguishes in a positive way that a school, despite what the naysayers say, is really doing good work for kids,” she said.

The reputation of Oak Park schools has helped make the district the county’s fastest growing, school officials said. Now it may soon have another Blue Ribbon winner.

Oak Park High School, along with the E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, are the county’s two contenders for this year’s awards, which will be given only to secondary schools. The schools are expected to find out this week whether they are finalists.

The first clue to reasons for Oak Hill’s success is the front door to the main office. Its large center window is stained glass.

At Oak Hills, neither money nor vandals are of great concern.

Parents liken the $4.5-million, eight-acre hillside campus to a private school. It features a baseball field and bleachers, a playground that a kid would clean the bedroom for, and a sweeping view of rock-studded hills.

“The kids are very excited about coming to school every day. They find it very challenging,” said Oak Hills Principal Anthony Knight.

Knight, an honors graduate of Pepperdine University, adds to the prep school atmosphere with his polo shirt and chinos. A credenza in his office features not one but two computers. He uses both of them routinely for financial spreadsheets and school documents.

Nearby, three remote controls are tidily arranged side by side. One of them, Knight explained, controls a 12-foot-wide satellite dish that feeds the closed-circuit televisions in every classroom. Students watch everything from programs they produce to NASA experiments in space.

The setting is especially impressive to newcomers such as Lisa Katz, a fifth-grader. She is just settling into Oak Hills after moving from Culver City.

“(Oak Hills) is a lot nicer and a lot more clean than my old school,” Lisa said. “That one had a lot of drug dealers and graffiti and stuff like that.”

That private school ambience is expensive. But Oak Hills parents--among the most affluent in the county--are willing to pay the price, in money and in volunteer time.

“We have people in just about every classroom just about every day,” said Suzana Williams of the Oak Hills Parent-Teacher Assn. School parents put in about 1,000 hours of volunteer time every month, roughly equivalent to having another five teachers.

“Tall and straight! Story ears on!” instructs kindergarten teacher Kathy Bergh.

When the children comply, Bergh hands her class over to mother Kat Pallicano. She quiets them with a reading of “Sadie and the Snowman.”

The break gives Bergh a chance to help three boys do math problems.

“That’s what makes our program work. I have a lot more hands-on time,” she said.

Bergh posts a work schedule for the mothers, who have signed up for nearly every available block of time during the week. And just like the paid staff, the volunteers have to find substitutes if they can’t make their scheduled hour.

“The public schools here are so wonderful we didn’t have to choose private schools,” said Pallicano. Her daughter, Alana, is one of Bergh’s kindergartners. She and her three younger siblings are the reason the Pallicanos moved to Oak Park from Santa Monica.

The PTA is also a cornucopia of money, raising an astonishing $50,000 to $60,000 every year for Oak Hills.

When the fifth grade goes on its annual field trip, a cruise from Ventura Harbor on the tall ship Californian, the PTA picks up the tab. Same for fourth-graders, who sail to the Channel Islands after reading “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” set on San Nicolas Island.

When the library wants to buy the year’s Newbery Honor and Caldecott Medal books, the PTA provides the funds.

When Knight wanted Oak Hills to have “the best (physical education) program money can buy,” the PTA ponied up the money, more than $6,000 for equipment and ongoing training for teachers.

And how many schools hire a professional graphic artist to design a logo? Oak Hills did. The logo shows the space shuttle zooming into orbit above the Oak Hills name. It is featured on T-shirts, sweat pants, jackets and other apparel--all for sale to discriminating students and their parents.

“I believe the space shuttle represents what the pyramids did in ancient times--the pinnacle of human achievement,” said Knight, whose specialty is history.

The space shuttle could also represent the hardiness of the Oak Hills community. Four years ago, 400 parents and students showed up at 2 a.m. for a field trip to Edwards Air Force Base to watch the landing of the shuttle Discovery.

But the most obvious use of all that money, from the PTA and from state and district funds, is Oak Hill’s expansive collection of personal computers and other electronic gadgetry.

Computers in the classroom are hardly unusual anymore, but Oak Hills uses them on a scale that in these tight times is astounding.

Every classroom has three computers--even the kindergartens. The computers are linked so one room can communicate with any other.

The school’s high-tech heart is the computer lab in the library.

When Jeremy Watson and Jonathan Hamer needed to quickly find some facts about tidal waves, they dashed into the library and opened an encyclopedia. Not the kind that fills yards of bookshelf space. Theirs was on a compact disc, connected to a computer monitor.

With a few keystrokes the two fifth-graders conjured up an entry, with illustrations, for “tsunami.” They printed out a copy and dashed back to their science class so they could get in on their teacher’s discussion of faulting in the Earth.

A few minutes later, Becky Koch’s fourth-graders poured into the computer lab to finish a writing assignment on early California explorers.

Koch had passed out copies of two essay questions, printed with the blotchy, eggplant-purple ditto ink that has been a staple of teachers since the invention of the No. 2 pencil.

But there wasn’t a pencil in sight. The students composed their essays on the computers. And when Koch, wandering from terminal to terminal, noticed several misspellings, she took action.

“OK, guys,” she instructed. “Use your spell-checker to help you.”

The lab has 18 Macintosh computers, each costing $1,400, and a $5,000 overhead projector can display an image from a computer screen on the wall.

But that isn’t enough for Knight because two students now have to share each computer. So the school is doubling the size of its computer lab. Next year, Knight said, no student will need to share.

Computers aren’t the only gizmos at Oak Hills. Using a $40,000 state grant, the school recently bought an 11-volume science course on laser disc along with seven laser disc players to view it. The school already owned seven disc players.

“The kids at this school have not seen a 16-millimeter film in two years,” Knight said. “You have to keep moving.”

Any lingering doubts that Oak Hills is firmly in the age of semiconductors are dispelled upon meeting Jessica Yuda, the self-assured president of the Oak Hills student council.

Jessica credited her election victory to her campaign speech.

“I didn’t screw up or anything. I had a great speech prepared,” she said.

She didn’t think to mention that it had been televised.