Largely Latino High School Fights Ethnic Stereotyping

Patty and Brahim Zabeli should be celebrating the purchase of a five-bedroom house in the Fieldstone Legends development.

With three young boys and a baby on the way, the Zabelis had outgrown their smaller house in another Placentia neighborhood.

The Zabelis moved into what they consider a better neighborhood last December. In doing so, they moved from the Valencia High School attendance area into boundaries of El Dorado High School, where they believe that their children will get a better education.

But even as the Zabelis are furnishing and landscaping their $312,000 dream house, trouble is brewing. If some parents at Valencia High have their way, the Zabeli children won’t be attending El Dorado High after all.

A petition being circulated by Valencia’s Parent, Teacher and Student Assn. board of directors calls for the school district to classify the homes in Fieldstone Legends and other new housing developments not as in El Dorado’s attendance area but as in Valencia’s. According to Charlene Fink, co-president of the board, doing so would diversify the ethnic mix at Valencia, which is 40% Latino.

According to the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, El Dorado is 8% Latino, while Esperanza, the district’s other high school, is 10% Latino.

“We’re just looking for balance,” Fink said. “We want all students to get a balanced education.”

The petition, which bears 180 signatures so far, comes at a time when the school district is considering a major realignment of attendance boundaries for its 19 elementary schools, five middle and junior high schools and three high schools. A boundary advisory committee will present its recommendations Wednesday, after spending 10 months devising a plan to reduce transportation costs, achieve racial balance and maintain neighborhood schools.

For Fink and other Valencia parents, the boundary changes represent Valencia’s best hope of reducing the school’s percentage of non-English-speaking students. Previous boundary changes have either left the high school’s attendance area intact or transferred predominantly white neighborhoods to El Dorado’s attendance area.

“We think Valencia has been overlooked in the past,” Fink said. “We started this (petition) to let the school board know that even though we aren’t as vocal, we are still concerned about what is going on.”

Fink said she also is concerned that Valencia has been falsely portrayed as a poor, ethnic school troubled by gangs and violence.

“Valencia is a terrific school,” Fink said. “It has the highest test scores in the district, and it’s been named a distinguished school by the state. But it suffers from poor publicity.”

Others in the community agree that Valencia is often miscast as second best when compared to El Dorado, Placentia’s other high school.

At a recent forum to discuss boundary changes, former Valencia teacher Jim Segovia said that the presence of minority students does not lower the school’s standards.

“Don’t be afraid to accept Mexican students into your schools,” said Segovia, now a teacher at Kraemer Junior High School. “They are eager to learn and bring a rich cultural heritage with them.”

Valencia’s highly regarded marching band, the large number of National Merit Scholarship finalists enrolled at the school and the consistently high scores its students achieve on national standardized tests have also been cited as proof that Valencia is as good as El Dorado.

In the past five years, Valencia, which has an enrollment of about 1,650, has had 15 students qualify as National Merit Scholarship finalists. El Dorado, with an enrollment of about 1,500, has produced 12 finalists during the same time period, and the district’s third high school, Esperanza, with an enrollment of about 2,500, has had 17 of its students qualify as finalists.

On standardized tests, such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test taken by high school seniors, Valencia students have consistently scored the same or higher than their counterparts at El Dorado and Esperanza. From 1986 to 1992, Valencia students’ combined math and verbal SAT scores were the highest in the district for the 1987-88, 1990-91 and 1991-92 school years. They were the second highest in the 1986-87, 1988-89 and 1989-90 school years.

At every grade level, the school’s scores on the California Achievement Test for the 1991-92 school year met or exceeded the national norm in nearly every category. And for the past three school years, scores for the senior class have been at the highest level in every category.

The school’s successes go beyond academics. Valencia’s football team won its division championship the past two seasons.

The school’s marching band is considered one of the top 10 in the county as well as the state. For the past six years, the band has qualified for the Southern California Tournament of Champions, which pits the region’s top 24 bands against each other. This school year, Valencia won first place in four categories at the competition.

Valencia cheerleaders and song leaders also frequently win local, state and national competitions, and last summer they won first place at a competition in Japan.

An active Associated Student Board has been successful in garnering support from the community, such as getting local businesses to give students discounts and underwrite school activities.

Despite indications that Valencia is at least the equal of El Dorado academically, Brahim Zabeli said he still thinks that El Dorado is the best high school the district has to offer.

“Quality in education is more than just test scores,” Zabeli said. “I just feel that El Dorado is better.”

The Zabelis said that Valencia is not as safe as El Dorado and that they worry about the presence of gangs there.

But Valencia Principal Joseph Quartucci said that his school is as safe as any other high school in the area. While some may look at Valencia’s ethnic mix and see a potential for gang violence, Quartucci said, he sees the opportunity for students to experience a variety of cultures that reflect the area in which they live.

“This school does draw from lower socioeconomic neighborhoods, but that doesn’t make the students harder to deal with,” Quartucci said. “In the past four years, we’ve had one gang-related incident on campus.”

Valencia has three full-time campus supervisors--one more than the district’s other two high schools--who patrol the school to head off trouble.

Last December, the school erected chain-link and wrought-iron fences to close off open portions of the campus. The action was approved by the district Board of Education in response to several incidents of violence at or near schools elsewhere in Southern California.

Valencia officials also removed lockers last summer, in part to eliminate hiding places for drugs and weapons.

Quartucci said that these moves do not mean that Valencia is dangerous. The extra supervisor has more to do with the physical layout of the campus than with problems with students, he said. He pointed out that the district’s other two high schools also are fenced and that lockers were removed at Valencia more to protect the school from weekend vandalism than to make it harder for students to conceal contraband.

Several Latino students said those who call Valencia a gang school must think that every Latino is in a gang.

“I live in La Jolla (Placentia’s predominantly Latino neighborhood), and nothing has ever happened to me,” said 17-year-old Jeanette Mendez. “I talk to everyone at this school. I know there are gangs here, but I don’t really see a problem.”

Mendez, a senior, said she gets tired of defending her school to those who haven’t spent time there. Those who rely on rumors to judge the school are not getting a true picture of what the school is like, she said.

Senior Jason Rochwerg transferred to Valencia from El Dorado after his sophomore year. He was attracted by the school’s academic environment, which he said is more demanding than El Dorado’s.

“I felt I wasn’t learning much at El Dorado; I wasn’t getting much out of it,” Rochwerg said. “This school is much harder, and I know I’m learning more.”

Rochwerg said he was concerned at first about safety but found that the school’s reputation is much worse than the reality. Even the increase in graffiti on campus hasn’t convinced him that he is at a troubled school.

Senior Tina Sauitufuga said Valencia has changed since her freshman year. But even though gangs have increased their presence at the school, she still doesn’t feel threatened.

“You know who’s in gangs, know who the taggers are, and if you’re not involved, it doesn’t threaten you,” she said.

Sauitufuga admitted that the presence of non-English-speaking students sometimes disrupts classroom activity.

“It sometimes keeps us back when the teacher has to keep explaining things,” she said. “It can get very frustrating.”

Quartucci acknowledged that the large number of non-English-speaking students is beginning to take its toll on the school. Valencia’s verbal scores on standardized tests have started to decline, which Quartucci attributes to non-English-speaking students.

Quartucci, too, would like to see a reconfiguration of school attendance boundaries that would more evenly distribute minority students throughout the district. It would benefit not only Valencia students but El Dorado students as well, he said.

“We won’t quit having conflict with racism until we have a significant number of minorities at all the district schools,” he said. “When there are minorities at all the schools, there will be no place to hide.”

Ethnicity of District’s High Schools Valencia High School is more heavily Latino and has a larger percentage of students with limited English proficiency than the two other high schools in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District. It also tends to have higher average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and holds its own in producing National Merit Scholars. Valencia High School Students: 1,666 Those with limited English proficiency: 485 (29%) Ethnicity White: 44% Latino: 40% Asian: 11% Black: 2% Other: 3% El Dorado High School Students: 1,504 Those with limited English proficiency: 59 (4%) Ethnicity White: 82% Asian: 9% Latino: 8% Black: 1% Esperanza High School Students: 2,473 Those with limited English proficiency: 87 (4%) Ethnicity White: 75% Latino: 10% Asian: 10% Black: 1% Other: 4% SAT Scores More often than not, Valencia has had higher average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores than the rest of the district, state and nation. The following are combined math and verbal scores.

Valencia Esperanza El Dorado District California U.S. 1987-88 940 938 930 936 908 904 1988-89 951 914 954 936 906 903 1989-90 944 926 959 941 903 900 1990-91 976 965 957 965 897 896 1991-92 1,001 966 942 967 900 899

National Merit Scholars Based on SAT scores and grade-point averages, students are nominated by their school to be National Merit Scholars. During the last five years, Esperanza and Valencia have slightly outpaced El Dorado in producing these students.

El Dorado Esperanza Valencia 1993 3 4 2 1992 2 6 4 1991 0 4 3 1990 3 2 2 1989 4 1 4

Sources: Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, Valencia High School; Researched by