Troubled Students Would Get Intensive Attention at Proposed Continuation School

Thousand Oaks teen-agers who fall behind in credits, frequently skip class or misbehave on campus may soon have a new option for putting their academic record back in order.

Under a proposal that Conejo Valley school officials will consider this week, troubled students would be able to make up failed or missed credits through an intensive mini-high school on the campus of Newbury Park High School.

The program would serve about 25 students at a time and feature counseling and unusually low pupil-teacher ratios. The goal is to have students rejoin their peers in traditional classrooms and graduate with them.

In essence, the plan would create a second continuation school in the Conejo Valley Unified School District. But unlike the existing continuation school, which serves about 250 students, the smaller program would be housed within the Newbury Park High campus.

“It’s for someone who’s not, for whatever reason, able to accomplish what they need to in a (traditional) setting,” said Jody Dunlap, principal of the district’s current continuation school, known as Conejo Valley High School.

Although administrators hope to have the program running by fall, it must first win approval from state and local officials.

Trustees with the Conejo Valley district are expected to vote on the plan during Thursday’s board meeting. An application to create a “necessary small high school” would then be sent to the state Department of Education, where the review process could take several months.

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Two school board members said Monday that they support the plan because state funds, rather than district money, would be used to pay for it.

“It makes sense economically and financially because they get higher staffing levels than the rest of the system,” Trustee Bill Henry said. “It’s kind of foolish not to take advantage of it.”

Under state guidelines, the mini-school’s staff would include several full-time teaching positions in addition to a full-time counselor. The program could serve up to 40 students, but district officials said they would limit it to no more than 28 and possibly as few as 23.

That would mean one teacher or counselor for every six or seven students, giving teachers time to work one-on-one with students or to call the home if a student fails to show up.

By comparison, the district’s three traditional high schools have student-teacher ratios of 30 to 1. Each high school counselor serves about 600 students.

Dunlap said she believes the lower ratios could prove to be a formula for success. About 90% of the continuation students referred to Conejo Valley High School are sent there for academic rather than disciplinary reasons, she said.

With the state willing to pay for such programs, Conejo Valley is not the only district that has found the concept attractive.

Officials with the Ventura Unified School District launched two mini-continuation schools--Ventura Islands and Buena Vista--two years ago on the campuses of Ventura and Buena high schools. Like the proposed Thousand Oaks program, students in Ventura’s programs attend a shortened school day and are allowed to take one elective through the larger high school.

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Gabriel McCurtis, principal of Pacific High School, the off-campus continuation school, said both Ventura Islands and Buena Vista are used for early intervention, to help students before they are sent to his campus because of failing grades.

Also, he said, students who stay on their own campus are more likely to return to a regular classroom than those transferred to Pacific’s continuation high school.

“Sometimes if you keep them too long, they don’t want to return,” he said.