Back-to-Basics School Proposed for Ventura

Hoping to answer some conservative critics of public education, the Ventura schools’ chief is proposing a back-to-basics school with a strict dress code, mandatory homework and required volunteer work by parents.

Ventura Unified School District Supt. Joseph Spirito will ask the school board Tuesday to convert one of the district’s 17 elementary schools to a stricter, no-frills educational setting.

Parents who send their children to the school would have to sign a contract agreeing to volunteer at the site at least three hours per week and to ensure that their students spend a certain amount of time every day doing homework.

Children at the back-to-basics school would also have to abide by a strict dress code.

“No shorts, no sandals, no halters, no tank tops, no boys wearing earrings,” Spirito said. And no jeans or T-shirts.

Girls would wear dresses or long pants, while boys’ attire would be restricted to collared shirts and slacks. Even teachers would be asked to limit their work wardrobe voluntarily to dresses for women instructors and ties and jackets for men.

Trustees said they support the superintendent’s proposal. But Trustee Diane Harriman added that she would not have wanted to work at such a school when she was a teacher.

“I would find this kind of atmosphere too restrictive for me,” said Harriman, who taught English for 30 years at Balboa Middle School and Buena High School. “But it may be just what a lot of parents would like.”

The school would be only the third back-to-basics institution in Ventura County. Simi Valley already has established such a program at Vista and Hollow Hills fundamental schools.

Spirito got the idea for the back-to-basics school during last fall’s campaign against the Proposition 174 school voucher initiative, when he listened to its supporters’ complaints about the public schools.

In the eyes of voucher supporters, public schools need to become safer, stricter and more focused on teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, Spirito said.

Parents also want choice, he said, echoing a key theme of the pro-voucher movement.

The back-to-basics school would answer all these concerns, he said.

If the board gives its support to the proposal Tuesday, Spirito said, the next step would be to choose a principal and a school site.

Because the district will not pay to bus students to the school, Spirito said he hopes to find a centrally located school that is accessible to families from around the city.

He also is seeking a school where most of the parents with children already there would agree to the volunteering requirement and to the more structured educational setting.

Once a site is chosen, parents at that school who don’t agree with the stricter standards can have their children bused to the next nearest school at district expense, he said. Teachers will also have the option to switch out of the school.

Spirito said he envisions opening the back-to-basics school in the fall or in 1995 at the latest, with 300 to 400 students and 30 to 40 teachers.

At least one elementary school may ask that it be chosen for the back-to-basics experiment.

Marie Atmore, principal of Montalvo School, said she and her teachers have begun discussing the proposal and will soon broach the idea to parents.

Montalvo already emphasizes teaching the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, she said, but it may be difficult for students at the kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school to adjust to Spirito’s dress code, she said.

“Some of the things may be too restrictive for my community,” she said. “My boys wear Levi’s.”

But one parent who said she would consider sending her child to the new school said she is particularly excited about the proposed dress code.

Terrie Torres, a legal secretary, said her 13-year-old daughter is in the program for gifted students at Balboa Middle School, where she is doing well.

But she would consider sending her 8-year-old son, now at a private Baptist school, to the back-to-basics institution.

Students at schools without strict dress codes put too much energy into planning their outfits and noticing what their classmates are wearing, Torres said. “It takes away from what they’re supposed to be learning.”