School Holds Fund-Raiser to End Mad Dash for Desks : Education: Camarillo High has collected more than $18,000 from parents and firms to purchase new furniture.

Camarillo High School sophomore Tim Bradley has learned the hard way the importance of always hurrying to his next class.

“You have to get to class early so you can get a big desk,” he said.

Although nearly all the desks at Camarillo High are the same standard wood model, they are a hodgepodge of sizes, the result of piecemeal purchases made since the school was built 30 years ago.

And the smallest of these desks look like they would better fit a fifth-grader than a high school football player such as Tim.

At 6 feet and 225 pounds, 15-year-old Tim said it is simply impossible for him to fit properly into the smaller desks: “I have to sit sideways all period.”

So he, like many other Camarillo High students and teachers, is relieved that the school is raising money to replace its scratched-up, carved-on, rickety wooden desks with gleaming new plastic models that are all one size--big.

“It’s just a lot easier to sit down,” Tim said of the new desks, which already fill two classrooms at the school.

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Launched just two months ago, the school’s “Adopt-a-Desk” campaign has so far raised more than $18,000 from parents and local businesses, surpassing the expectations of its organizers.

School officials have already purchased 100 desks and hope to raise the additional $3,500 they need to order 300 more, which would give the school enough new desks to fill about 10 classrooms.

“My dream is to have a new desk for every student in the school,” said Principal Terry Tackett, who organized the campaign.

But some of the school’s 2,200 students question whether Camarillo High has more pressing needs than shiny new student desks.

“It’s nice to have new desks,” sophomore Diane Freedenberg, 15, said as she sat at one of the new desks in one of the school’s science classrooms. “I don’t think it’s our No. 1 priority. Some of the textbooks are really old.”

Indeed, sitting on top of Freedenberg’s spotless new desk was a tattered text published in 1980, the main book used by her college-preparatory science class. At $39 per book, the average cost of new textbooks is significantly cheaper than the $75 price of the new desks at Camarillo High.

However, some school officials said it is easier to raise money for easily visible goals such as buying furniture than for more mundane tasks like replacing textbooks.

“It gives the community something tangible to work for,” Oxnard Union High School District Assistant Supt. Gary Davis said.

Besides, the state already provides money to replace worn-out, obsolete books, Davis said, including $325,000 this year that the Oxnard district will divide among its six high schools.

The financially strapped state education department, however, has no funds set aside for districts to replace desks or other equipment, officials said.

“All districts just get by with what they can,” Oxnard Assistant Supt. Bob Brown said. “We scrimp.”

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Although the district uses general fund money each year to replace broken desks, individual schools that want to go beyond this piecemeal approach are on their own.

So far, Camarillo High, located in the most affluent area of any of the district’s six schools, is the only one that has launched a fund-raising drive for new desks.

The other schools raise substantial amounts of money each year either through bingo games or other fund-raisers, Davis said, but they use the funds for various purposes. Channel Islands High School recently built its first football stadium and a new track with bingo money, while Rio Mesa used donations to build an all-weather track.

Channel Islands High School Principal John Triolo said many parents in his school’s predominantly low-income neighborhood would not be able to afford the $50 donations that Camarillo High is requesting for purchasing desks.

“Just like at every school, parents have to support their kids if they’re in athletics or band,” Triolo said. “For a lot of our parents, to go beyond that is difficult.”

At Camarillo High, about 120 parents have each pitched in $50 for the fund-raising drive, entitling them to get their name on a small brass plaque on a new desk. Most of the money raised so far has come from local businesses.

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Excited by the success of the campaign, Camarillo High officials said the new desks will add not only to students’ comfort, but also their sense of school pride and their pleasure in attending classes.

Some students agreed.

Senior Trevor Carpenter, 17, said one of the best things about the new vinyl-like desks is the smooth writing surface instead of the graffiti-carved tops of many of the old wood desks.

“I can write,” Trevor said, holding his pen over his paper to demonstrate, “and not have my pen start trailing in the grooves.”