School Panel Offers New Goals for Conejo District : Education: Thousand Oaks parents, officials stress the use of computers, smaller classes.

Emphasizing school safety, better use of computers and a reduction in class size, a panel of Thousand Oaks parents and school officials has drawn up a broad blueprint for the future of education in the Conejo Valley.

The panel’s recommendations will be discussed today as members of the Conejo Valley school board meet to define new five-year goals for the district. Those goals, replacing ones set in 1989, will be used to guide curricula and budget decisions.

The panel’s list of 10 suggestions, whittled down from months of community meetings, calls for giving more autonomy to administrators at individual schools, encouraging parent involvement, improving school facilities and recruiting high-quality staff. Other goals call for bringing more computers into the classroom and for preparing students for jobs in the 21st Century.

Two school board members on Wednesday said they are concerned that some of the suggested goals are too vague and that others might be impossible to achieve.

“They should not just be expressions or slogans of flag-waving, pep-rallying points,” said board member Bill Henry. “Every single one of those should be quantifiable.”

Specifically, Henry said he is troubled by the goal of reducing class size. Because class size is so closely tied to state funding, he said there is little the district can do to reduce the pupil-teacher ratio.

“Certainly in the foreseeable future, class size, if anything, will get worse, not better,” he said.

Board member Mildred Lynch said she believes the panel’s suggestions focus too much on technology and special programs and not enough on traditional academics and solid classroom teaching.

“We are not here to train workers for corporations. We’re here to educate people,” she said.

“There’s nothing academic in here. There’s nothing about teaching what some of us think kids ought to know,” Lynch added.

Board President Dolores Didio, who served on the committee working on the five-year plan, said the list of suggested goals was distilled from hundreds of comments made by parents, students, teachers, business leaders and others.

Developing a master plan for the use of technology, school safety and shrinking class size were repeatedly named as top priorities, she said.

School performance and quality teaching may not have been mentioned as goals, she said, because the district is already recognized for having high scores on standardized tests and quality programs.

“I think what people are looking for is expanding beyond that,” Didio said.

Didio said the goals are intentionally broad and the committee never set out to develop detailed policy suggestions or set specific benchmarks.

In addition to holding public forums to seek community input, the district also solicited written comments from a number of groups. Among the letters received was a list of 16 suggestions from the American Assn. of University Women. Goals suggested by the group included “freedom from violence,” “bias-free education,” and intervention programs for at-risk students.

The district’s previous five-year plan contained seven broad goals, including reducing permissiveness, offering support to teachers and boosting student performance. There was no mention of technology.

Today’s workshop on the plan will begin at 3 p.m. in the board room at the Conejo Valley district offices, 1400 E. Janss Road in Thousand Oaks.