Top-Notch Schools Need Accessibility : * Bring Back-to-Basics Campuses to Central Santa Ana

Santa Ana’s “fundamental” public schools began in the 1970s as a “back-to-basics” response to perceived educational needs, and, many say, as a means of stemming white flight in an increasingly Latino district.

Today, the schools provide strict dress and appearance codes and engage students and parents in contractual commitments aimed at advancing educational excellence and ensuring a nurturing home environment for achievement.

The qualities of commitment that the district’s two elementary and one intermediate schools have achieved are in step with calls across the country for increased parental involvement. Locally, they are the envy of many in the city and around the county. The results show why: The fundamental schools have far outpaced their conventional counterparts in the district in academic achievement. Reading, language and math scores on standardized tests are significantly higher at the fundamental schools than districtwide.

Over time, some of the differences between neighborhood and fundamental schools have begun to dissolve as teaching strategies increasingly are used by different schools, and as fundamental schools have adopted new technology and accepted special state grants and special-education students. And innovations that began in fundamental schools, such as improving study habits, have been adopted in other schools.

The achievement and special environment created at the fundamental schools have put them in line with advanced thinking for educational reform, and understandably, there are some in the district who wonder why those advantages are not available to more students. The location of the schools on the perimeters of the city has led critics to ask whether the fundamental schools, in effect, create a separate system of education for the district’s more affluent students, who can get more easily to the fundamental schools, and generally are more aware of their offerings. District Supt. Rudy Castruita has acknowledged that while “everybody has access, not everybody has equal access.”

The district now plans to open a second intermediate fundamental school in 1996, on the north side of town. That school itself is the subject of controversy over the cost of purchasing the land. But a more basic concern is that it, like the other fundamental schools, is to be located outside the center of the city. And there are concerns about whether even opening that school will change the demographics in any significant way by serving more poor students. Since the district does not provide transportation to the fundamental schools, it remains difficult for low-income families living in central-city areas to get to them.

The district should see what it can do to make fundamental schools more accessible to the poor. It has 36 elementary and intermediate schools, but 42% of white students attend the three fundamental schools. It would make sense to try establishing a fundamental school in the central part of the city when the district builds new schools there, thereby making access easier for low-income students. The district says it is interested in providing “choice” for those who would like fundamental schools; it should do what it can to make good on that promise in the downtown area.

Establishing one or more fundamental schools in the central part of the city would go a way toward sending a signal to the community. It would suggest that the same standards of parental involvement and voluntary commitment to excellence can be applied all across the district, and not just for the students who can afford transportation.