COVER STORY : Virtual Integration : High-Tech Video System Connects Latino Pupils in Norwalk and White Counterparts in La Mirada, but Is It Desegregation?

Using a high-tech video system, Latino elementary-school students in Norwalk and white students in La Mirada are taking part in a groundbreaking, state-funded integration program that keeps students off buses and in neighborhood schools. The live, two-way transmissions allow more than 1,000 students from four elementary schools to share--over the airwaves--lessons, activities, experiences and even friendships without ever leaving their classrooms.

Some experts question whether the effort constitutes true integration, and whether the program should be paid for with state desegregation funds.

“This program doesn’t render the Norwalk schools any less Latino or the La Mirada schools any less white,” said Los Angeles law professor James A. Kushner, who has written widely on the history of segregation and civil rights.

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Local school officials insist, however, that their plan achieves integration and is a popular and relatively low-cost alternative to busing--a form of desegregation that typically inspires heated opposition. The program also gives students an opportunity to learn about advanced video and computer equipment, they said.

“This program is the wave of the future and I think we’re going in the right direction,” said Ginger Shattuck, deputy superintendent for Norwalk-La Mirada Unified. “It is a way to allow students to come together through the most current technology we have. This is a natural evolution for integration, and for us, better than adopting a forced integration plan or another form of voluntary integration.”

So far the state has contributed $2.82 million--about 80% of the costs--apparently without judging whether the program is true desegregation or a proper use of state funds designated for desegregation.

Officials from the state Department of Education said they have no role in approving desegregation programs. With no apparent scrutiny, the department forwards the funding request to the Legislature, which makes an annual appropriation for desegregation programs. The state controller’s office, which actually pays the bills, ensures only that the money is spent as planned.

The local desegregation program, which is called Global Studies for Multicultural Understanding and began this year, matches mostly Latino classes from Edmondson and Sanchez schools in Norwalk with mostly Anglo classes from Dulles and Gardenhill schools in La Mirada.

In addition to the video encounters, the third-, fourth- and fifth-graders meet in person for occasional activities, including field trips and art projects. And their teachers instruct them on appreciating different cultures and races. This emphasis on teaching cultural diversity, not the high-tech hardware, is the heart of the program, said program director Richard E. Contreras.

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On a recent school day, fourth-grader Gilbert Contreras, 10, from Edmondson School, was using the live, two-way link with Dulles School to plan part of a districtwide cultural festival. The June 9 gathering will feature plays, dances, songs and speeches by students from classes paired for the desegregation program.

Contreras was explaining to Kevin Smith, 10, how to make a maraca by putting pebbles in a soft-drink can and then attaching the can to the end of a stick.

Contreras sat facing a customized cart holding a bank of portable video equipment. The gear included two 27-inch color monitors. On one monitor, Contreras could see himself and his own classmates. On the other monitor, he could see and hear the students from Dulles. The setup was the same on the other end of the transmission.

Students in the two classes have met in person three times. Each class has visited the other school and in December, the two classes traveled together to San Fernando Mission.

Another set of classes, from Sanchez and Gardenhill, used the video link to plan experiments for a joint field trip to coastal tide pools at Corona del Mar. Students teamed up with partners from the other school to conduct the experiments.

“They’re nice,” said Crystal Gil, 9, of the students she met from La Mirada. She’s learned that she and her video buddy, Holly, “have a lot in common. We both like strawberries. And we both like each other.”

She added that she likes the video connection because “you can meet new friends and you can keep in touch with different schools.”

The level of contact between the classes has varied widely.

Fourth-graders at Sanchez School in Norwalk and Gardenhill School in La Mirada collaborated almost daily for several weeks to compose three mini-operas, with the assistance of a guest artist provided through the Music Center of Los Angeles County. Sometimes, however, the video contact is as little as 30 minutes a week.

The number of face-to-face meetings also varies.

By mid-May, some of the 38 paired classes had yet to meet in person during the yearlong experiment. Other classes have met about half a dozen times, which is closer to what district planners had in mind.

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Most students said they enjoyed using the video equipment, but added that it’s hard to become friends via video alone.

Part of the problem is that the transmissions are often grainy and the sound quality poor--problems that technicians are supposed to correct this summer. “You can’t get to know them that well because you can’t see them right,” said Andrew Velasquez, 9, of Sanchez Elementary.

Nonetheless, the video interaction allows the children to ease painlessly into another world view, said Martin Carapia, a fourth-grade teacher in Norwalk. “A lot of kids feel comfortable where they are,” he said. “Here, they are in their own surroundings, but they get a view of another culture.

But is it integration?

“It is a far cry from the comprehensive, desegregation experience,” said James S. Liebman, a professor at Columbia University School of Law and an expert on desegregation. “One of the things that you want from desegregation is for students to be able to gain respect for each other’s entire situation. What you can get from an image of a student is such a small proportion of what that student’s life is about.”

Courts have rejected similar desegregation proposals, including a Texas plan to desegregate via closed-circuit television, said Gary Orfield, director of an ongoing Harvard University desegregation study. A Colorado plan to desegregate by having students spend half the school day together also was ruled inadequate by the federal courts, he added.

But Norwalk-La Mirada is under no court order. School district officials made the decision to embark upon their desegregation program without prodding from parents, politicians or courts.

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One of their objectives was to bridge misunderstandings between the communities of Norwalk and La Mirada. For years, disenchanted parents have claimed that schools in the other city were getting a larger share of district resources.

Differences between the communities have contributed to this sense of separateness.

According to 1990 Census figures, La Mirada, a city of 44,000, is about two-thirds white and Norwalk, with 94,000 residents, about two-thirds minority. In 1990, 82.4% of the residents of La Mirada owned their homes, compared to 65% in Norwalk. The median annual income for La Mirada residents was $47,123, compared to $38,124 in Norwalk.

Differences also are obvious at the four elementary schools participating in the desegregation program.

Edmondson, one of the Norwalk schools, is 98% Latino. About 85% of the students belong to impoverished families and qualify for subsidized school lunches. About 69% speak limited English.

Dulles, in La Mirada, is 63% white, though it has a growing Latino minority. About 19% of the students qualify for subsidized school lunches. About 9% speak limited English.

The tightly packed streets around Sanchez Elementary in Norwalk are lined mostly with simple, two- and three-bedroom wood or stucco single-family homes that date mainly from a post-World War II construction boom. The residents are largely a mix of recent Latino immigrants and Latino families who have lived in the area for generations.

Three years ago, district officials floated the idea of voluntary busing to achieve integration in both communities. But in a series of meetings with school officials, parents in both cities expressed little enthusiasm.

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Families in the tight-knit Norwalk neighborhood did not want to send their children to school outside the area. The idea of busing received a similarly lukewarm reception in La Mirada, a quiet bedroom community that is home to numerous retirees and young professionals. The city is a mix of older middle-class neighborhoods interspersed among new tract developments. To some La Mirada families, Norwalk was a virtual barrio, plagued by gangs and crime. They did not move to La Mirada to send their children to schools in Norwalk, some said.

The district ditched the busing plan and began to look for alternatives. The current program was the brainchild of former district Assistant Superintendent Marie Plakos.

“It seemed like with the technology available in this day and age, there would be an avenue available to bring kids together to get to know each other and work on common projects,” said Plakos, now an administrator in the Savanna Elementary School District in Anaheim.

After the school board in 1992 unanimously approved a desegregation plan that described several potential integration strategies, administrators quickly set to work on the technological approach. They applied for funding to the state, which spends about $81 million a year on voluntary desegregation programs in 47 school districts.

In other districts, the money typically pays for more traditional forms of desegregation, including voluntary busing and magnet schools--which are schools with special programs designed to lure white students to minority neighborhoods and vice versa.

The Norwalk-La Mirada program does not fit neatly into any category of integration that the state Education Code lists as eligible for state funding. For its funding application, the district calls the four participating schools “magnet centers.” In a magnet school, however, students of different ethnicities are desegregated by actually attending the same school, said state and local school officials.

Program director Contreras said Norwalk-La Mirada was not trying to deceive the state by classifying its program under the heading “magnet centers.” The problem was that the innovative program didn’t fit an existing funding category, he said.

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The program received high marks from a private auditing firm that examined it under the auspices of the state controller’s office, he noted.

The auditors checked to see that all the money was properly accounted for and it was, said Edd Fong, spokesman for the controller’s office. The auditors, however, did not evaluate whether the program achieved true desegregation or how well it worked.

Fong emphasized that the office does not have the expertise to determine the educational value of programs. “That’s why you have a Department of Education,” he said. “I’ve heard our people say that the presumption is that a program is valid unless we hear otherwise from the Department of Education.”

But the education department is required to do nothing other than receive desegregation plans, and has no role in approving or rejecting them, said Joseph R. Symkowick, general counsel for the department.

State officials simply added Norwalk-La Mirada’s program to the package of desegregation plans approved by the Legislature. The Norwalk-La Mirada program has received about $1.4 million each of the last two years. The first year’s money covered start-up costs. The video transmissions began last fall.

Using this money and any other available funds, the district ultimately hopes to link all district classes by video and computer, said program director Contreras.

To use state desegregation money for video and computer technology is inappropriate, said law professor Kushner, who teaches at Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles.

“It’s rather unfortunate that the funds are being diverted, through a well-meaning program, to something that is not desegregation,” Kushner said.

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Some local school administrators credit Norwalk-La Mirada for discovering an ingenious method to get state funding for technology by calling it desegregation. Other school systems also want this technology, they said, but can’t afford it during tight budget times when school districts everywhere are cutting programs and laying off employees.

With its desegregation funds, the Norwalk-La Mirada district has been able to purchase an array of equipment besides the two-way video system. Each participating classroom has two computers that can read compact discs, a variety of educational software, a color printer and a laser disc player.

Each of the four schools has three machines, similar to overhead projectors, that transmit video pictures of documents to other schools. Every campus also has a Xerox LiveBoard, which has a color monitor the size of a big-screen TV. Students can write directly on the monitor with an infrared pen and the text will appear at the school on the other end of the transmission, Contreras said.

Several current and former administrators outside the district praised Norwalk-La Mirada for finding a way, through desegregation funding, to help all its students.

“If you can find ways to legally bring in money from new or existing sources, bless you, because that’s the only way you can offer special opportunities to youngsters,” said retired school superintendent Stanley G. Oswalt.

Schools Participating in High-Tech Desegregation:

1. Sanchez Elementary City: Norwalk Enrollment: 598 students, kindergarten through fifth grade. Ethnicity: 94% Latino Income: 73% of students qualify for subsidized school lunches. Language: 69% speak limited English.

2. Edmondson Elementary City: Norwalk Enrollment: 798 students, grades K through 5. Ethnicity: 98% Latino. Income: 85% of students qualify for subsidized school lunches. Language: 69% speak limited English.

3. Dulles Elementary City: La Mirada Enrollment: 417 students, grades K through 5 Ethnicity: 63% white Income: 19% of students qualify for subsidized school lunches. Language: 9% speak limited English

4. Gardenhill Elementary City: La Mirada Enrollment: 559 students, grades K through 5 Ethnicity: 60% white Income: 14% of students qualify for subsidized school lunches. Language: 3% speak limited English.

Source: Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District

On the Cover

Fifth-graders Desiree Garcia, left, and Justina Robledo work at a “LiveBoard” in the library of Sanchez Elementary School in Norwalk. The extra-large computer screen enables students at separate locations to work on projects together.