Parents Taking a Second Look at Public Schools : Education: Grass-roots campaign recruits families with children in private schools to return to neighborhood campuses.

Down the hill from her Tarzana home, Kande Grabiner sees a gold mine: A small, neighborhood school offering a full academic and enrichment program to students who don’t need interviews or connections for admission. And it’s free.

To Grabiner, all Wilbur Avenue Elementary needs is a few more committed parents like her who are willing to give public schools a chance. In the last few months, Grabiner and her husband, Len, have turned their living room into a recruitment office, trying to convince friends and neighbors over coffee and dessert to shun pricey private schools in favor of their neighborhood school. In launching their Wilbur School drive, the Grabiners join a group of parents and principals throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District and a growing effort by similar groups nationwide that are trying to draw families back to public education, with varying degrees of success.

“A lot of parents are fearful that their children won’t get a quality education at the public school but that’s just not true,” Kande Grabiner said. “I also had incorrect information. I thought my daughter would get a far better education in private school, but I don’t believe that anymore.”

Los Angeles educators are unable to put a number behind such recruitment efforts in the district. But Deputy Supt. Dan Isaacs said, “Heck, yes this is happening all over the district, especially in schools where the leadership has a vision for (recruitment efforts) to occur.”

Also, as a result of a new state law allowing parents to choose campuses, principals say they are finding more private school families willing to consider public education. Under the open enrollment policy, about 500 students districtwide left private schools for Los Angeles Unified campuses this year.

Efforts by the Grabiners and others mirror those of parent recruiters for public education throughout the country. An organization called Parents for Public Schools began three years ago in Jackson, Miss., to combat the middle-class--and mostly white--flight from public schools. The nonprofit group includes 35 chapters and about 10,000 members in a dozen states, including Arkansas, Texas and Colorado. There is not yet a chapter in California.

“Our mission is recruitment of middle-class parents, many of whom left (public schools) as a result of desegregation,” said Kelly Butler, the group’s interim executive director. “We are of the firm belief that public schools are the best place for our children to learn to live and work in a pluralistic society. Many people are sending their children to private and parochial schools without even considering the public school as an option.”

Just six months ago, public schools weren’t an option for the Grabiners, who were worried about low test scores, crowded classes and how their child’s education would be affected by the many Spanish-speaking students at the school.

But when she heard other parents talking about competitive kindergarten interviews, applications and tuition at private schools, she realized she needed another option. “I felt like it was all about class and money--who can afford the so-called best schools,” Grabiner said. “It didn’t feel right.”

So Grabiner took a tour of Wilbur School, a small campus with 400 students, two fairly active parent groups, an after-school program and a computer lab. The Wilbur student population is 64% white, 18% Latino and 12% African American.

The Grabiners, however, find themselves in an uphill battle trying to unravel a tangle of misperceptions and concerns about racial issues, class, poverty and crime that have prompted thousands of parents to leave public schools over the last two decades. Principals and parents in various parts of the sprawling district--including Westchester, East and West Los Angeles and the west San Fernando Valley--say they face similar problems.

The Grabiners have so far received a commitment from four other families. They are trying to work on about 10 more.

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Geoff Abbott, a parent who attended a recent meeting with the Grabiners, was persuaded to enroll his son at Wilbur. “Meetings like this have opened our eyes to an alternative to spending $8,000 to $10,000 a year,” Abbott said. “Maybe the public school system is getting an unfair shake. At age 5, I think you can take a chance.”

But Jeff Domine is not so sure. Domine, who attended Los Angeles Unified schools and whose mother taught in the system for 30 years, said he is worried about crowded classrooms.

“Look, I personally would prefer public schools,” Domine said. “My problem is with the numbers. Thirty kids to one teacher, I think, is a tough learning situation.”

School officials say that since thousands of families fled the system during the busing era of the late 1970s, they have battled a tarnished public image. “I think there’s a gap between what our schools are offering and what some parents believe we’re offering,” Isaacs said.

But although desegregation sparked “white flight” 20 years ago, parents say their disinterest in public education stems more from their perceptions of the schools. They worry about overcrowded--and hot--classrooms, outdated textbooks, few enrichment courses and a bureaucratic school system that is removed from the teachers and students.

Los Angeles Unified faces all the problems of a large, urban school system, struggling to provide an education to increasingly poor, immigrant children. Of the district’s 636,400 students, 66% are Latino, 14.4% are African American and 12% are white.

Class sizes are among the highest in the nation, test scores typically dip below state and national averages and labor strife occurs almost annually.

“L.A. Unified is always on the brink of bankruptcy,” said Nancy Kaczenki, who attended one of the Grabiners’ meetings and has not yet decided whether she will pull her child out of private school. “It has a terrible reputation.”

Palisades High School Principal Merle Price, who recently held a special meeting with parents and their children who attend private schools, agrees that families lack confidence in the public school system.

“They feel kids aren’t going to be challenged and given opportunities,” Price said. “Safety issues are a concern--there are lots of rumors about weapons.”

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But Price, who has opened the doors of his campus to private school parents and students, launched a successful recruitment drive this year, enrolling 100 new students.

“When they see the climate of the school and the level of the educational program, that diffuses the rumors and misconceptions,” Price said.

But educators say that by choosing public schools, parents often create a separate--and unequal--education for their children. Amy Stewart Wells, an assistant professor of education at UCLA, said some schools in affluent areas are experiencing a form of segregation in which parents put their children into separate tracks--honors classes, for example--in which they create homogenous and segregated groups.

“I think if you buy into the concept of the neighborhood public school with diverse students and varying socioeconomic levels, you have to be aware of the kind of power you bring to it,” Wells said. “I think parents need to look carefully at the whole school and the whole system.”

Wilbur Principal Richard Hickcox said the entire school would benefit from more involved parents with time and money to donate.

“Parents hear bad things about the school district, and then people apply that to their local neighborhood school, and bad things really are not happening at the school,” Hickcox said. “That’s a problem of the reputation of the school district that, I think, we have to overcome.”