Schools Will Start With a Clean Slate : Education: Freed from state control, Palisades charter complex will try new ways of teaching.

Fast forward to September, when a cluster of Pacific Palisades schools will embark on an adventure the rest of Los Angeles will watch closely:

* At Palisades High School, students begin a new “humanitas” program by asking, “What does it mean to be human?” They are studying the history of ancient Greece, which first asked that question, reading “The Odyssey” and viewing art of that period, which idealized the human figure.

They also begin hours of community service, a new graduation requirement. And they meet for the first time with a faculty adviser/mentor for help in planning their courses--and futures.

* At Pacific Palisades Elementary, at-risk youngsters get special tutoring and after-school help, while parents are drawn into the process and offered English lessons where necessary.

* At Canyon Elementary, all grades focus on a single theme: living in an ecologically sensitive coastline community within the context of a global village. They learn first about the Santa Monica Bay area, and will later compare life here with that in other coastal communities throughout the world as expressed through literature and the arts. They will sail to the Catalina Island Marine Institute camp and study outside the school in a “learning grove” of trees.

* At Marquez Elementary, parents have agreed--in writing--to become more involved in their children’s education and are attending meetings and classes at Marquez and its “sending schools,” the inner-city campuses that relieve overcrowding by busing students to Westside schools.

These four new Palisades Charter Schools approved by the Los Angeles Unified School District board this week are among the first in the country to achieve independent charter status as a group, freeing themselves from district and state control to try new ways of improving student achievement and increasing enrollment. California’s charter statute took effect in January. Only a few states have passed such legislation.

When Paul Revere Middle School joins the group, probably within the next year, the Westside consortium will span grades K through 12, involving thousands of students from throughout the city. Several other elementary schools in the area are expected to come aboard later, although school districts can grant no more than 10 charters each and Los Angeles Unified now has seven.

The Palisades group is viewed by many as a bellwether of public education in Los Angeles, serving as a working model for school reforms still in the planning stages elsewhere.

“It will signal to a lot of parents that it’s time to take a second look at public schools, that it is possible to have local control within the framework of a large public system,” Westside board of education member Mark Slavkin said. “And it will lead the way in showing the district how to go.”

He praised Pacific Palisades as “a community that wants to be first in line to move forward, to create a different and better format and to put decision-making and accountability at the local level.”

Under the charter, expected to be ratified by the state Board of Education this month, parents, teachers and administrators at the four campuses are free to devise their own curricula, graduation requirements and teaching methods, but initially will continue to rely on the district for business services such as budgeting, transportation, cafeteria services and employee labor negotiations.

Slavkin said that defeat of the charter proposal would have been “the last straw for many in the Westside community, who would walk away and say, ‘I told you so.’ ” Under that scenario, enrollments would continue to drop, the statewide school voucher initiative would have a better chance of passage in November, and support would swell for the complete breakup of the massive school district, he said.

The Palisades Complex, a consortium of nine Westside schools that have been working together for several years, had proposed a single charter for the four schools within it that were ready to move ahead together. But that plan was opposed by district Supt. Sid Thompson and several civil rights groups.

They said it would, in effect, create a separate school district. The civil rights advocates said the charter status could be used to exclude minority youths or to shortchange those accepted into the program. They asked that charter status be withheld unless the Palisades schools commit themselves to eradicating all discrepancies in academic achievement between ethnic groups within three years.

The formal absence of a middle school also left a gap in the envisioned K-12 continuum, critics said. Paul Revere was seeking approval as a science magnet when the proposal was drafted and is only loosely included.

After months of behind-the-scenes efforts, the Palisades plan was nearly derailed in the final days when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Inc., Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund voiced concerns about its intent and legality.

Palisades planners thought they had answered those concerns last week by hastily rewriting the single proposal into four separate charter applications (although the schools will still work together through a charter school coordinating council) and by being more specific about academic goals and how results would be measured. But representatives of the four opposition groups appeared before the school board Monday to argue against approval.

A Latina parent with children at Palisades Elementary, however, reminded board members that the groups do not represent all minority parents. Speaking in Spanish, Juana Acala told them, “In my opinion, the charter plan is the possibility of a better education for our children, Latino and African-American. . . . Why say no?”

In the end, Thompson threw his weight behind the proposal. It passed, 6 to 1, with only South-Central board member Barbara Boudreaux opposing.

The Palisades Charter Schools will be open to students from anywhere in California, although preference will be given to Palisades residents and to students already being bused from the schools’ traditional sending schools. All four schools are below capacity; Palisades High alone has room for about 800 more students, although only 200 to 300 ninth- and 10th-graders will be accepted into the program its first year.

Because high housing prices have limited the number of families with young children who can afford to live in Pacific Palisades and many local residents have chosen to send their children to private schools, Anglo enrollment has steadily dropped. And as district-wide enrollment has slackened, so too has the number of students bused to the Palisades.

By opening their schools to anyone who wants to come--although transportation will be provided only for those living in traditional sending areas--the Palisades group hopes to attract dissatisfied parents of all ethnicities willing to try new ways.

“This is public school choice, “ said Pam Bruns, a parent activist and teacher.

All four schools have guaranteed measurable results. At Palisades High, for example, one goal is to raise student achievement by 10% a year, said Principal Merle Price, with test scores surpassing those of the regular school and 95% of graduating seniors going on to colleges and universities.

The district will monitor the charter schools’ progress, and failure to meet stated goals could result in revocation of the five-year charter.

Except for Boudreaux, board members lauded the plan and praised the volunteers who spent thousands of hours to develop it.

“We are going into a new frontier,” Warren Furutani said.

A hot line has been established for information about and applications for the Palisades Charter Schools: (310) 454-0823.