Unruly or Truant Camarillo Students Face Saturday Class

Camarillo students who skip class or cause trouble may soon face an even more unpleasant punishment than being kept after school or sent home on suspension: Saturday school.

Following the lead of other school districts around Ventura County, the board of the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District has decided to allow each of its 13 schools to hold Saturday morning classes for truant or unruly students.

At least two Pleasant Valley schools already operate Saturday classes once a month.

But the new board policy will enable schools to hold such classes every week and to expand the program to students who need academic tutoring though they have no disciplinary problems.

Although schools may choose to use Saturday classes to punish some students or to give others extra help, Pleasant Valley officials said the best part is that the weekend sessions will bring in additional money to the cash-strapped district.

By sending truant students to Saturday school, the district can recoup some of the nearly $200,000 in state funds lost each year from unexcused student absences, said Jan Maez, the district’s budget director.

School officials will be able to save even more money by punishing students caught fighting, smoking or otherwise misbehaving by ordering them to the weekend classes rather than sending them home.

More than just a financial boon, however, the Saturday school program will be an effective disciplinary tool, school officials said.

Stephen L. Hanke, principal of Monte Vista Intermediate School, said the threat of Saturday school has worked in the Simi Valley Unified School District--where he previously worked--to discourage students from skipping classes.

“It dramatically cuts down on incidents of truancy because the word gets out that if you don’t come during the week, you’ll be coming on Saturday,” Hanke said.

In addition to Simi Valley, the Ventura and Thousand Oaks school districts also operate Saturday school programs.

Monte Vista holds Saturday classes once each month, but will have them every week beginning next fall, Hanke said.

Besides Monte Vista, Los Altos Intermediate School will hold Saturday classes every week; Valle Lindo School will have the sessions every other week, and other Pleasant Valley schools are considering establishing the program, district officials said.

Although each school will be able to design its own Saturday classes, the programs will all run from 8 a.m. to noon and will focus on helping students complete work assigned by their regular classroom teachers.

Some schools, such as Monte Vista, may also assign students who are sent to Saturday school to spend the morning picking up litter or doing other odd jobs on the campus.

Some Monte Vista students agreed with their principal that the threat of Saturday classes will help keep them and their peers in class and out of trouble.

“People ditch school and get suspended and you send them home,” Ola Samuels, 14, an eighth-grader, said. “That doesn’t do anything.”

But, she said, “nobody wants to get up early on Saturday.”

Eighth-grader Luisa Martinez, 14, said she was recently sent to Saturday school as punishment.

“It was rough,” she said. “You have to get up early. All you do is work.”

And eighth-grade student Danielle Hoyland, 14, who also has attended the weekend sessions, agreed that no one looked forward to going to school a sixth day.

“There’s better things to do on Saturdays,” she said.