Ringing in School Year : Class Search, Homework Greet West County Students on Their Return

Posted on the door of Michelle Townsley’s sixth-grade classroom at El Rio School in Oxnard is a sign that reads: “Free knowledge Monday through Friday. Bring your own container.”

It is, the teacher said, an offer that applies to each of her 30 or so sixth-graders, who joined thousands of children in west Ventura County returning to school Tuesday.

“I’m hoping they might get the subtle informal message that if they bring their brain, it will get filled,” said Townsley, who put her students to work right away.

“They will definitely have homework,” she said. “It’ll probably be journal-writing, but not about summer vacation. Everybody does that.”

About one-third of Ventura County’s 119,000 schoolchildren made their way to classes Tuesday, as school opened for high school students in Oxnard and Camarillo and for elementary school students in Camarillo, Somis and El Rio.

Classes in Ventura, Santa Paula and Ojai resume today, while students in Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Simi Valley begin their fall schedules Thursday.

Elementary students in the Oxnard School District and schools in Fillmore operate on year-round calendars.

Summer’s unofficial end came abruptly for 15-year-old Diana Briceno, who was waiting in line early Tuesday morning for her schedule of classes at Oxnard’s Channel Islands High School.

“I’m a little bit nervous,” the sophomore said. “It’s a big change from ninth grade to 10th grade. It’s going to be a lot harder.”

Senior Allan Estivitz is not worried about his full schedule of classes, which includes oceanography, English and Spanish.

“It’s going to be easier because I’m used to school,” said Estivitz, who plans to attend Ventura College next year. “But it goes by real quick. It seems like just yesterday I was a freshman.”

For the first time Tuesday, the Oxnard Police Department assigned three full-time officers to the neighborhoods surrounding the high schools to help prevent gang-related or illegal activity.

“This is our effort to address stuff going on at the beginning of school,” Assistant Chief Jim Latimer said. “We wanted to try something different this year.”

Channel Islands Principal John Triolo said attendance was up slightly from a year ago at the south Oxnard high school. Minutes after the 8 a.m. bell, dozens of students were still lined up, waiting to enroll in courses.

“First period is always a little shaky on the first day of school,” Triolo said. “But after that, the school runs.”

Many students wandered around the Channel Islands campus Tuesday, looking for a room number on maps or asking one of 10 campus supervisors how to get to class.

“We have to chase everybody into the classrooms,” said Moa Saipale, one of the hall monitors. “It’s really busy because of the new freshmen. None of them know where to go.”

In Camarillo, vandals broke four classroom windows at Tierra Linda School, the Pleasant Valley School District’s new elementary campus.

Principal Dianne Quinby-Anders said someone smashed the windows late Monday or early Tuesday. By class time, however, cardboard boxes were placed into the window frames of Stephanie D’Andrea’s first-grade class.

Quinby-Anders said the opening day of school went smoothly, even though more children showed up than the 713 spaces the school was designed for.

“We’ve already pushed it to the max,” the principal said. “(But) there’s so much growth in the area and we have no funds for another school.”

Registration is based on a first-come, first-served basis for students who live in the Mission Oaks neighborhoods of Camarillo, Quinby-Anders said. The additional students will be bused to another nearby school, she said.

At Oxnard High School, students are looking forward to vacating the run-down, graffiti-scarred campus next spring, when work on the new Gonzales Road campus is finished.

“This place is really gross. It’s dirty and there’s lots of graffiti,” 16-year-old junior Erin Stanfield said. “When students are going to a place like this they don’t have any pride in their school.”

Times correspondent Maia Davis contributed to this story.