Most Parents Choose ‘No’ on Choice of Schools : Education: Over the past year, campus transfers have been requested for only about 2% of the county’s public students.

When a new law last year gave parents the right to place their children at any school within their local district, Ventura County educators hailed it as a major reform in public education.

Finally, said supporters of the so-called school-choice law, parents would have real options for selecting their child’s school, a decision that had long been dictated by rigid attendance boundaries.

But in the year since the choice law was enacted, Ventura County parents appear to have issued a firm response: Thanks, but no thanks.

On average, just 2% of the county’s 130,000 public schoolchildren have applied for school-choice transfers since Jan. 1, 1994, an informal survey of school districts shows.

The transfer activity ranged from a high of 4% in the Conejo Valley Unified School District, where parents are scrambling to place their children in a newly designated middle school, to just 0.19% in the Ventura Unified School District.

Some districts, such as tiny Mupu near Santa Paula, are too small to offer transfer policies. Others, such as the Oxnard Elementary School District, are just now starting school-choice programs.

And a few, such as the Santa Paula Elementary School District, have offered open enrollment for years.

Gary Davis, assistant superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District, said he was surprised by the low number of applications in his district. Just 40 students out of 11,415 applied for transfer, he said.

Because the law is relatively new, some parents might not be aware they can now ask for a transfer without giving a reason, Davis and others said. In the past, permits have been available mainly to accommodate day-care needs or to keep a child close to where a parent works.

And some parents may be put off by a hitch in the law that forbids a transfer if it displaces a neighborhood student. That has not had much effect in districts such as Conejo Valley Unified, Moorpark Unified and Simi Valley Unified where space is available at many schools.

But in districts where enrollment has nearly peaked--the case at Ventura Unified and Hueneme Elementary school districts--parents cannot expect to get their first choice in schools, administrators say.

“I don’t like to talk to parents too much about school choice, because in our district there really isn’t a choice,” said Arlene Miro, Ventura Unified’s director of instruction. “I don’t want to get a parent’s hopes up and then have to tell them no.”

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Other educators say the lack of interest in school choice underscores what they have long suspected: The overwhelming majority of parents prefer to keep their child at their neighborhood school.

There are great advantages to enrolling a child close to home, educators say. Students can walk home and parents do not have far to travel if there is a problem at school. And children who grow up in the same neighborhood can attend school together.

More importantly, some say, parents in Ventura County believe the core academics taught at their neighborhood school are adequate. So there is less motivation to move to another school, said Frank DePasquale, Moorpark Unified’s assistant superintendent of instruction.

“Parents feel very good about all the schools in Moorpark and, therefore, there is not a lot of choice being exercised,” he said.

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In highly urbanized districts where test scores tend to fall below the state average and parental involvement often is minimal, school choice becomes more important, said Deborah Connelly, a consultant in the state Department of Education.

“In urban areas, like Los Angeles or San Francisco, you have more unsatisfied people and more people looking to move to another school,” she said. “That is not the case in Ventura County.”

Kathy O’Green, a 34-year-old mother of two young children, said she moved from the San Fernando Valley to Moorpark last year in part because she heard that the schools in Moorpark have a good reputation.

She knows she can apply to enroll her 4-year-old son, Kyran, at any elementary school in her area. But she doesn’t see the need to put Kyran in any school farther than Peach Hill School, an elementary campus just a few streets from her home, O’Green said.

“I checked into the program and am satisfied he will do well there,” she said. “But it was nice to know I had options.”

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The concept of school choice has become increasingly popular in recent years, school officials say. But it took a challenge by conservative critics of public education for it to become reality.

Assemblywoman Dede Alpert (D-Coronado) quickly shepherded the measure through the state Legislature in the summer of 1993, shortly before the school-voucher initiative was placed on the November ballot.

That initiative, which had the backing of religious right and other conservative groups, would have provided taxpayer-financed vouchers for students who attend private schools. Although the initiative was defeated, backers of the measure kept up the pressure for more options in education.

“Much of the school-choice movement is coming from colleges and universities and people with political agendas,” Hueneme’s Jeffrey L. Baarstad, associate superintendent, said. “It is not necessarily coming from grass-roots parents’ groups.”

But the call for change cannot be pinned solely on conservative activists. Polls consistently show that Americans are generally troubled by the state of public education.

A 1994 Gallup Poll found that 49% of Americans give the nation’s schools a grade of C. But 92% gave a passing grade to the neighborhood school that their child attends.

“This shows we are a little schizophrenic when it comes to public education,” Ventura Unified Supt. Joseph Spirito said. “We love our neighborhood school and think all the problems are at the other school down the road.”

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With that in mind, public school administrators have strived to respond to concerns over choice in education.

Another state law, which passed at the same time as Alpert’s bill, allows school boards to decide whether to open enrollment to students from other districts. When it is fully implemented this fall, parents will have another layer of choice, school administrators say.

In Ventura County, schools offer myriad choice programs, some new and some around for decades. Conejo Valley Unified last year converted Colina junior high to a middle school format that includes students in sixth through eighth grades.

The middle school is so popular that the district is converting a second junior high, Los Cerritos, to the same format, Supt. Jerry Gross said.

Gross has also formed a marketing committee and plans to create glossy brochures touting each school’s features, such as an emphasis on the arts or in mathematics. Those flyers would be handed out to parents shopping for a particular curriculum, Gross said.

Santa Paula’s six elementary schools are all magnets that offer differing curricula, such as an emphasis on arts or sciences, in addition to a core academics found at every school.

And the Ventura Unified district has offered an open classroom--children of differing ages learning together in the same classroom--at Blanche Reynolds School for about 20 years. Mound School is reorganizing as a math magnet and district leaders hope to start a back-to-basics magnet school this fall.

Even with Ventura County’s current lack of interest in choice, public educators must be prepared to increasingly offer parents educational options, Gross said. School choice is not a fad, it is here to stay, he said.

“It will grow in this country as public schools become more aware of the education market,” Gross said. “As long as school voucher ballots threaten public education, we will respond accordingly.”