Schools Ask Community to Help Out : Fillmore: Supt. Mario Contini hopes local businesses, churches and parents will raise expectations in two areas: spelling and homework.

Year after year, students in the Fillmore Unified School District have scored near the bottom on standardized assessment tests, compared to other Ventura County schools.

Teachers in Fillmore have complained they get little support from parents. Parents have argued that the schools fail to demand enough from their children.

And nearly everyone in Fillmore has come to expect little from students in the public schools, parents and educators say.

So Fillmore school officials have decided to dump the problem of improving education in everyone’s lap.

Under a plan to take effect when Fillmore schools reopen Aug. 4, the district is enlisting the help of the entire community--including businesses, churches and parents--to raise expectations of students.

“The schools blame society,” said Mario Contini, the recently appointed superintendent who launched the campaign. “Society blames the schools, and my opinion is if we get everybody in this community together, there’s nobody left to complain.”

Rather than try to do too much too soon, however, the plan is to push students to improve in two main areas: homework and spelling. If students put more attention on these tasks, Contini said, everything else should follow.

“There are people out there who might say, ‘My gosh, there’s so much that ought to go on in education and they’re fooling around with spelling and homework,’ ” he said. “My feeling is that they’re going to be the things that are going to open the door to real substantial change in the performance of students.”

Called “Expectations for Achievement,” the campaign drawn up by Contini and a group of teachers and parents will set consistent standards for homework and spelling that all teachers and students will be expected to meet.

Teachers in every grade will be required to assign a minimum amount of homework, ranging from 10 minutes three nights a week for third-graders to two hours five nights a week for high school students.

Students in every grade will also receive lists of commonly misspelled words that they will be expected to spell correctly on every school paper they turn in--words such as right and write for second-graders and they’re and their for sixth-graders.

Parents will be asked to sign contracts with teachers pledging to help their children meet these goals.

Local merchants and restaurants will be urged to hire only students who demonstrate a record of completing their homework.

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And churches will be encouraged to recognize in their weekly bulletins students who meet the homework goals.

“We’re going to send a clear and consistent message,” said Susan Dollar, the new principal of Sespe Elementary School who helped Contini draft the campaign. “And I think that’s real important.”

Although many teachers have long stressed the importance of homework and correct spelling, some have grown frustrated after repeatedly assigning homework that students did not do, Dollar said.

“Sometimes you get really discouraged when you spend all that time and effort on preparation and a large number of children don’t do it,” she said. Teachers “gave up in frustration sometimes,” she added.

The same is true with spelling, Dollar said.

While some teachers have emphasized spelling by consistently lowering the grades of children who turn in sloppy work, others have not.

As a result, she said, a high proportion of Fillmore students get the simplest words wrong, confusing witch and which , for example, and misspelling a lot as alot .

“I think it’s more carelessness than anything else,” Dollar said.

The poor performance of students has showed up in the latest statewide test scores--the California Learning Assessment System exams given in spring, 1993. Fillmore students scored at or near the bottom in most areas compared to the other 20 districts in Ventura County.

Fillmore’s scores have been similarly low on the most recent Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and in advanced placement tests for college.

“What we kept on seeing was really fine instruction going on, but the performance wasn’t there,” Contini said.

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After years of growing frustration among both parents and teachers, Contini decided in the spring to ask the community for solutions. In meetings with about 20 different groups, ranging from teachers organizations to neighborhood councils, Contini said he heard a common theme: Raise expectations.

In the past, some district leaders have argued that schools in the small community, with about 13,000 residents, face special challenges: More than half of its students are poor enough to qualify for subsidized lunches, and a third have limited proficiency in English.

“We’re not going to use that as an excuse anymore,” Contini said.

Some business leaders and parents said they think the district is on the right track.

“The employers are going to cooperate tremendously,” Fillmore Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Hank Carrillo said. “So many of the merchants know these young people or know their parents and I think that’s going to be a big plus for the community. The advantage is that it’s a small town.”

Richard Windmill, a parent who sat on a committee that gave ideas on the campaign, said one of the best things about the plan is that it will get community members more involved in the schools.

“There’s a need to bring the community into ownership in the school district,” said Windmill, who has four children in the Fillmore schools. “There’s been a distance there, unnecessarily so. I really think maybe nobody has taken the time to build the links and build the ownership.”

By focusing the campaign on spelling and homework, educators said they hope to generate among students a stronger sense of discipline and a pride in doing good work.

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“If we can change the mind-set,” Dollar said, the community can “make kids realize that all of this is very important in their success at life.”

Some students said they welcome greater academic challenges.

Anna Baro was one of about six children at a Fillmore youth club this week who gave opinions on the upcoming campaign.

As it is, 15-year-old Anna said, some of her teachers at Fillmore High School don’t require students to spell words correctly on tests and essays. Anna said she is about a C-plus student when it comes to spelling, but she would like to get better before she graduates.

“When you go into college,” she said, “you’re going to need it, right?”

Fillmore Unified School District

Schools: Three elementary schools, one junior high, one high school, one continuation high school.

Students: 3,304

Teachers: 174

Minority enrollment: 75%

Students with limited English skills: 32.7%

Students who qualify for subsidized lunches: 55.4%

Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, 1992-93: math 439, verbal 357

California average on SAT: math 484, verbal 415

Source: Fillmore Unified, college board, state Department of Education