Schools to Delay New Choice Policy : Education: Oxnard district officials postpone open enrollment because of concerns of racial imbalance.

Concerned about aggravating the racial imbalance among their schools, Oxnard Union High School District officials are delaying implementing a new state-mandated policy to allow students to attend the school of their choice.

A state law that took effect this year requires all California school districts to establish open enrollment in their districts by Jan. 6, 1995.

Most Ventura County districts have moved quickly to allow school choice, and are already accepting applications from parents who want to transfer their students to new schools next fall.

The Oxnard high school district had also planned initially to implement its school-choice plan at the beginning of the 1994-95 school year.

But Oxnard officials have decided to postpone until January putting the new policy into effect. Because most students will not want to transfer in the middle of a school year, officials said, the postponement will effectively delay the start-up of school choice in the district until the fall of 1995.

School officials said they need more time to decide how to limit transfers that would exacerbate the existing racial imbalance among the district’s five high schools.

Four of the high schools--Channel Islands, Hueneme, Oxnard and Rio Mesa--are predominantly minority. And the fifth, Camarillo High, is mostly white.

School officials are particularly concerned that white students from Rio Mesa High in Camarillo, which is 70% minority, will apply in droves to attend nearby Camarillo High, which is 78% white.

“It’s an interesting dilemma,” Supt. Bill Studt said. “We want to be able to provide the choice and let parents decide what school their children will attend. On the other hand, when you have one school that is almost entirely Anglo and other Anglo students from other campuses flow to that campus, it gets out of balance.”

Earlier this year, Oxnard school officials proposed allowing open enrollment to begin in the fall on the condition that transfers between schools did not change the racial balance in any one year by more than 5%, by increasing either the percentage of minorities or whites.

Then board members decided that 5% may be too high and asked district staff to review whether they should set a lower limit. District officials said they are still in the middle of that review.

State law allows districts to limit transfers under their school-choice policies if schools are full or if the enrollment changes would upset existing racial balances.

“The whole thing was done recognizing there are situations where it would worsen potential segregation issues,” said Susie Lange, state education department spokeswoman. “There are schools that want to maintain some semblance of a mix and don’t want to lose all their white kids.”

But the Oxnard Union High School District is apparently one of the few in Ventura County where there is a significant enough racial imbalance among the schools to warrant concern that the problem could get worse.

The Ventura and Conejo Valley unified school districts, for example, are both launching their school-choice plans next fall. Although officials in both districts said they will monitor changes in racial makeup at the schools, they are not expecting any significant shifts.

Nevertheless, Conejo Assistant Supt. Richard Simpson said, “It’s a legitimate issue for many districts.”

In the Oxnard high school district, the only way to ensure that Camarillo High does not become more lopsidedly white is to have an equal number of minority and white students transfer to the school, Assistant Supt. Gary Davis said.

“You would have to make sure that for every Anglo student that moves, there would also have to be a minority,” he said.

School officials already encourage minority students who live in the Oxnard Plain area, where Channel Islands, Hueneme and Oxnard high schools are located, to transfer to Camarillo High for the school’s magnet programs in Russian and agriculture.

And about 65 students--mostly minorities--take advantage of this transfer option each year.

But it will be a problem persuading more students from the Oxnard Plain to transfer to Camarillo High, officials said.

The district does not provide bus service for students who attend schools outside of their areas, so they have to find their own transportation to Camarillo High. In addition, officials said, most students prefer to stay at schools where they know people.

At Rio Mesa High, Ruth Smith, president of the school’s parent-faculty organization, said she doubts there will be a flood of transfer requests to Camarillo High when the district launches its school-choice plan.

The Oxnard high school district is already “pretty open about transfers within the district, especially at schools where there’s space available,” Smith said. “I know a lot of the parents are very happy with Rio Mesa.”

But Rio Mesa junior Ken Seldeen said he knows of at least two students who say that their parents want them to transfer to Camarillo High.

For students in general, Ken said, the choice between schools is simple: “They want to go where their friends are.”

Ethnic Imbalance Ethnic makeup at schools in the Oxnard Union High School District *:

School Enrollment % white % minority Camarillo High 2,198 78.1% 21.9% Channel Islands High 2,572 12.3% 87.7% Hueneme High 2,433 17.2% 82.8% Oxnard High 2,132 23.2% 76.8% Rio Mesa High 2,189 29.4% 70.6%

* Does not include district’s continuation school

Source: Oxnard Union High School District