3 Santa Ana Schools Stir Praise, Controversy : Education: Some hail the ‘fundamental’ program for its dress code, discipline, academics; others call it elitist.

Mark Perew and his children have done their share of shopping for schools.

The eldest began kindergarten near the family home in Lake Forest, but Perew was “very much unsatisfied.” Later, his two girls spent a year in Placentia classrooms, which Perew recalls as “an absolute disaster.”

Unwilling to settle in his search for top-notch education, Perew considered private schools, even thought about teaching his kids at home. Finally, defying all stereotypes, he left suburban south Orange County and moved to Santa Ana.

But Perew’s is not just any Santa Ana school. His three children attend John Muir, one of the city’s magnet “fundamental” schools, where test scores are far above the district average and competition for classroom space is so keen that parents camp overnight to register for kindergarten.

Because of the program’s popularity and success, the district decided last week to open a fourth fundamental school, but some in the community are struggling to define the program and make access to it more fair.

Nearly two decades ago, the fundamental schools were founded in Orange County’s largest school district as English-only bastions of parental control, where the three R’s reigned supreme and dress codes and discipline were serious business.

Today, the two elementary and one intermediate school retain rigid dress codes and discipline: Girls can’t wear makeup, boys’ can’t have hair that reaches below collars or have beards or mustaches, and shorts are allowed only on hottest days. Academics and patriotism are stressed, and homework is assigned four nights a week--even for kindergartners.

“It’s just higher expectations,” said Raylene Salcido, 14, who completed Greenville Fundamental and now is student body president at MacArthur Fundamental Intermediate School. “Since the standards are higher, the students try harder.”

But with districtwide curriculum requirements and teachers swapping styles and strategies, the difference between neighborhood and fundamental schools has blurred. Critics say the only real difference lies in the student populations, and accuse the magnet schools of serving “yuppie bigots” in an elitist system.

“They’re magnet schools for Anglos, and it’s got to be undone,” said Nativo Lopez of the immigrant-rights group, Hermandad Nacional.

“We should not have two systems in our district. We should not have an apartheid-type system in our district,” said Lopez, the father of a Santa Ana third-grader. “Separate but equal has never been equal. . . . In Santa Ana, we’re clustering children of the same racial group and of the same income brackets. . . . It’s racial education.”

Such charges date back to the start of Santa Ana’s fundamental movement in 1974, when many considered the proposal a solution to the massive “white flight” from the district, where Latino immigrants had begun to dominate and bilingual education was becoming the norm.

Like most schools in Orange County, the fundamental schools now have mostly minority students, but they continue to draw disproportionate numbers of the city’s white, middle-class families, creating a kind of district within a district that looks very different from Santa Ana Unified as a whole.

Consider the demographics:

* The district has 36 elementary and intermediate schools, but 42% of the white students attend the three fundamental schools.

* At neighborhood schools, 83% of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches because they come from poor families. Among students at fundamental schools, only 29% qualify.

* Other Santa Ana schools serve populations where 77% of the students have limited English proficiency; fundamental schools have only 14% in that category.

* While many Santa Ana schools are overcrowded, the fundamental schools have enrollment caps and long waiting lists.

Regardless of race or income, all fundamental students have one thing in common: Their parents went out of their way to get them there and have signed contracts pledging their success.

“When you have parents committing to standing in line and registering for the school, committing to the school, you have an advantage,” said MacArthur Principal Jane Russo. “Any time parents and teachers and students come together committed to a set of goals, you’re going to be successful.”

But Joan Wilkinson, a school board member from 1979 to 1987, said fundamental schools “always seemed to have some special privilege.”

“If a child isn’t behaving, OK, goodby. We don’t correct the behavior, we just send them to another school,” she complained. “To me, it’s uneven. It’s not equitable.”

Defenders of the fundamental schools say the demographic differences are accidental. Enrollment is first come, first served, with the only admissions requirement being agreement to follow the rules and support the schools’ philosophy.

“The people who go to fundamental school are the people who are motivated to take advantage,” said Jim Richards, a former Santa Ana school board member who was among the original advocates of fundamental schools. “That’s the concept that built our country, that’s capitalism: You get to benefit more for your extra effort than everyone else.”

But getting students to the fundamental schools is not so simple.

The district does not provide transportation, and the schools are in Santa Ana’s safest neighborhoods near the edges of the school district. This keeps them relatively free from the problems of gangs, graffiti and drug deals that plague many of the district’s other campuses, but it also makes them difficult to get to for poor families living in the central-city areas.

For the past several years, parents have camped outside these schools for more than a day so they would be at the head of the line to register their children.

Making the competition even stiffer, at MacArthur graduates of fundamental elementary schools and siblings of current students get first priority for openings at the intermediate school.

Many parents, particularly new immigrants, may never even learn that the magnet schools exist.

“Everybody has access, but not everybody has equal access,” Supt. Rudy Castruita acknowledged. “We need to arm all our parents, whether they be immigrant parents, whether they be parents in the inner city, to access all the education in the system.”

To that end, Castruita and a majority of the school board fought for the second intermediate fundamental school, which is scheduled to open in 1996 and will be on the north side of town (MacArthur is near the city’s southern edge). But even that school is far from the city center, and it is unclear whether its opening will change the demographics of the fundamental system.

“I think it’s wrong for us to put these schools way at the north and south ends of town,” said school board member Rosemarie Avila, who has two children at Greenville and is an ardent backer of fundamental education. “People are always bragging that we have schools of choice. But how can you say you have equal access if you don’t tell anybody these schools exist?”

In addition to the new intermediate school, some parents and educators hope the district will create a fundamental high school. Right now, the district is rapidly losing fundamental students who leave town rather than join the neighborhood high school system. Nearly a quarter of MacArthur’s 1993 graduates are no longer in the district.

For example, Katherine Farless’ three children attended Santa Ana elementary schools and MacArthur, but will graduate from Fountain Valley High. Farless was a happy customer during her years in Santa Ana Unified, but said she was afraid to send her children to the district’s high schools.

“There was no way I was going to have them walk anywhere in that neighborhood, for safety reasons,” Farless said of Valley High, the school closest to her home. “If there was a fundamental high school . . . I might have looked into that more.” Santa Ana high schools, she said, “just didn’t offer a real draw.”

These and other critical issues have surfaced in recent months as the school board debated the new intermediate school, approving it Wednesday by a 3-2 vote.

Still, no one seems entirely sure what fundamental education means.

Originally, fundamental schools rejected technology, scoffed at team teaching and cooperative learning, refused special state or federal grants, had neither special education nor advanced classes and did not provide native-language assistance for students who did not speak English.

Now, computers and television are a staple of the classroom, where students sometimes learn in rows and sometimes in groups. All three schools accept state money and have special education students, and the intermediate school has an honors track. Instruction remains in English, but there are teacher aides to help those struggling with the language.

The entire district uses the same curriculum and has the same standards for achievement.

“We take what works and what’s best at schools and we try to incorporate them throughout our district,” Castruita explained.

For example, all intermediate schools now ask students to use three-ring binders, an idea that started at MacArthur. Homework charts, too, started in the fundamental schools and are now standard fare, along with specific lessons designed to improve study habits. Next year, several neighborhood schools will even experiment with parental contacts.

Meanwhile, the fundamental schools have grown away from their “back-to-basics” roots, becoming a potpourri of progressive and traditional teaching methods.

At Muir one day last week, a teacher in one class was writing in a perfect hand on a neatly lined chalkboard while her four-grade students sat in rows and raised hands before speaking. However, in another class children were scattered around the room. Some even sat on the floor or hovered in the corner with a video camera as they practiced speeches.

“You would see a lot of the same practices in our classrooms as you would in other classrooms,” admitted Greenville Fundamental Principal Melanie Champion. “The school has evolved.”

Parents like former Lake Forest resident Perew appreciate their opportunity to participate in that process.

“For our family, it really is a commitment that we are going to work with our children and with the school to make this a meaningful and productive educational environment,” he explained. “That doesn’t mean that we’re going to sit at home and just send them off to school with a nice lunch and pat them on the head when they get home. It means that we get involved with what’s going on there at the school.”

Any discussion of fundamental education eventually comes back to parental involvement. Parents who care enough to shop for the best schools generally have children who are more ready to learn, teachers said.

“In a traditional school you have a lot more kids who have given up on the system and who are difficult. . . . All we’re doing is isolating the kids who have the potential to go on,” said Bill Sturgeon, a veteran history teacher who has been at MacArthur since it opened in 1982. “The problem is greater than fundamental schools. The problem is the kids who have given up on the system. Maybe we need to revamp the whole system.”

District Within a District

Ethnic composition at Santa Ana’s three fundamental schools, Greenville and Muir elementary and MacArthur Intermediate, differs greatly from the 34 other elementary and middle schools in the district. The fundamental schools also have smaller percentages of students with limited English language skills and those entitled to free or reduced charge lunches:

Fundamental Non-Fundamental Ethnicity Latino 58% 90% White 28% 3% Asian 8% 6% Black 5% 1% All others 1% - Total enrollment 2,792 34,417 Limited English skills 14% 77% Free/reduced lunch 29% 83%

All others less than 1%

Higher Scores

Fundamental school students also far outscore their district peers in standardized tests. The Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills is given annually and scored by percentile rankings. Here are results of the 1992-93 exams for the fundamental schools compared to the district’s average:

Reading Language Math Grade 1 Greenville 57 71 65 Muir 51 59 69 District 27 37 46 Grade 2 Greenville 56 68 64 Muir 48 60 68 District 22 27 40 Grade 3 Greenville 63 75 79 Muir 61 55 69 District 29 32 40 Grade 4 Greenville 64 76 79 Muir 70 75 74 District 24 32 40 Grade 5 Greenville 60 76 78 Muir 64 75 78 District 22 35 39 Grade 6 MacArthur 45 49 55 District 17 25 28 Grade 7 MacArthur 52 57 52 District 23 31 29 Grade 8 MacArthur 59 56 50 District 26 31 25

Note: Only students who speak English take the CTBS. Recent immigrants who speak another language typically do not take the tests for two or three years after they begin school.

Source: Santa Ana Unified School District

Researched by JODI WILGOREN / Los Angeles Times

Dress for Success

According to the Santa Ana Unified School District dress code, forbidden school wear includes, among other things, cutoff shorts, items with professional or collegiate sports affiliations and those with references to alcohol, drugs, bigotry or profanity. The city’s fundamental schools have stricter ideas about appearance. Guidelines include:

CLOTHING

* Hemlines: Must be no more than three inches above the knees, and no undergarments may show. No skirts or dresses with attached shorts or pants.

* Shirts and blouses: Must be tucked in unless they are “specifically styled to be worn outside.” Waist-length blouses must be worn with a shirt underneath so the stomach does not show when arms are raised.

* Pants must be ankle-length or longer: Leggings or stirrup pants must be worn with dress or long blouse. Worn, ragged or torn pants not allowed. No overalls or camouflage clothing.

* Shorts: At elementary schools, shorts are permitted only in September, or on those days declared by the principal because of temperatures. Then, only hemmed dress shorts at mid-thigh are allowed; no play or jogging shorts. Intermediate school students may wear hemmed shorts.

* Tights: Girls may wear tights, but not nylons.

* Boots: Allowed only in wet weather.

* Sweat pants: Permitted if part of a matched jogging suit.

* Belts: Except for kindergartners, students must wear belts whenever they have garments with belt loops. Suspenders must remain on shoulders.

* Under garments: Girls of “appropriate age and build” must wear bras at all times.

* Shirts and tops: Low-cut shirts, spaghetti straps, bare midriffs, see-through blouses, tank tops, muscle shirts, open-mesh shirts and bare-backs are not allowed.

APPEARANCE

* No tattoos.

* Hair: Girls’ bangs must be cut above eyebrows or pinned back so as not to impair vision. Boys’ hair should be neatly groomed above the eyebrows and shirt collar; no tails allowed. No hair designs or bleached/dyed hair.

* Facial hair: Boys of appropriate age and development must shave or clip facial hair.

* Makeup and colored nail polish: Are not allowed at elementary schools; intermediate students may wear “lightly applied blush,” black or brown mascara, clear nail polish and colorless Chap Stick.

* Earrings: Girls cannot wear earrings longer than one inch or have more than two per ear. Boys cannot wear earrings.

* Combs: Students may not carry combs extending outside the pocket.

Source: Santa Ana Unified School District, individual schools

Researched by JODI WILGOREN / Los Angeles Times

Contract Agreements

Parents and students in Santa Ana’s fundamental schools sign contracts that include stipulations similar to the following:

STUDENTS WILL

* Strive for excellence in academic work by observing the school’s homework policy, completing all assignments neatly, accurately, on time, and making up work missed during all absences within the time frame established by the teacher.

* Complete all requirements for specific subjects in order to earn promotion.

* Show respect to all students, teachers, administrators and staff members.

* Comply with all requirements of the school’s code of student conduct.

* Maintain an atmosphere for learning in each classroom.

* Comply with the school’s dress code.

* Regularly attend all classes unless ill or excused.

PARENTS WILL

* Provide a positive support to the goals, philosophy and program of the school.

* Assist child in achieving the required academic standards necessary for promotion.

* Participate in conferences with school personnel as requested and support mutually agreed-upon decisions.

* Know and enforce the school’s homework policy and provide conditions at home conducive to study.

* Be responsible for child’s regular attendance, including arrival on time before school and prompt pickup after school.

Source: Santa Ana fundamental schools

Researched by: JODI WILGOREN / Los Angeles Times