Summer School Enrollment Declines : Education: Simi officials attribute drop to fewer courses, quake’s effect. Conejo educators cite a restructuring of classes.

For the second straight year, summer school enrollment in Simi Valley has dropped by more than 100 high school students, a decline educators have attributed in part to changing course offerings and the need to take time off after the Northridge earthquake.

School officials in the Conejo Valley have also reported a decrease in high school enrollment for summer school, but said the numbers are probably the result of course restructuring that has alleviated a need for some students to take summer courses.

At Royal High School, where students from Simi Valley’s two high schools attend summer classes, 984 students registered for summer school this year.

That number has dropped from 1,123 students registered in 1993 and 1,232 in 1992, Simi Valley district officials said.

“It’s down and we’re not sure why,” Assistant Supt. Susan C. Parks said.

Many students--and their families--may still be recovering from January’s quake, which caused extensive damage at Simi Valley High School, some officials suggested. “It might just have to do with people being weary in general,” Parks speculated.

Eleanor Love, summer school principal at Royal High School, agreed. “Part of it is the earthquake this year. A lot of people still have houses in disrepair.”

Simi Valley is offering fewer courses this year--another possible factor contributing to the enrollment drop, Love said.

“You always have this base of kids who need summer school to make up classes,” Love explained. “It is the other kids, the more motivated students who want to get ahead, those are the ones we’re not seeing as many of because we are not offering the classes.”

Fewer social studies courses, such as history and government, are being offered this year in Simi Valley because educators determined that summer sessions do not provide enough time for a thorough study of the material.

“The push is not to cover vast amounts of material but to go in-depth,” Love said. “We looked at some kids and their preparation and noticed that social studies classes in summer school were not providing the in-depth education in six weeks.”

Although many elementary schools continue to offer arts, crafts and other enrichment classes during the summer, many high schools focus on academic courses such as math or economics.

“Traditionally in summer school you could take arts and crafts and all kinds of fun stuff,” Love said. “But summer school has become more of an opportunity for students to make up (failed courses) and remediate their skills.”

In the Conejo Valley Unified School District, summer school enrollment is down for different reasons, district officials said.

“I think we are about 100 less from last year,” said Max Beaman, summer school principal at Newbury Park High School, which has about 960 students enrolled from the district’s four high schools.

The decrease, he said, is largely due to students no longer needing to take academic classes in the summer to make room for elective courses during the regular school year.

As a result of Newbury Park High School’s course restructuring last year, some elective classes are now offered before classes during the regular school year, eliminating the need for students to take summer classes to get ahead, Beaman explained.

“(Fewer) of the Newbury Park kids are going to summer school because of that,” he said.

In Simi Valley, however, a need to juggle class schedules is one reason students are enrolling in summer school.

Sixteen-year-old Dennis Marsh is taking a government class this summer because he wants to take Spanish--a class in which he “didn’t do so hot”--in the fall. Marsh said he knows students who are taking summer classes to make room for other courses during the year.

“There’s a few of us that are in music who are taking classes,” he said, referring to band members like himself.

Marsh, who will be a senior at Royal High School in the fall, said negotiating his classes doesn’t bother him. “I think the scheduling works out fairly well,” he said.