SAN GABRIEL VALLEY / COVER STORY : Stay-at-Home Students : Innovative programs at four area public school districts boost enrollment while providing supplies and other resources to parents who teach their children themselves.

Adrianne Presnell, a public school student in the Charter Oak Unified School District, rolls out of bed and into her Glendora living room for her daily lessons.

In a new take on home schooling, some parents and public school districts have given up glaring at each other across the table of educational debate and instead have forged an innovative alliance that allows parents to teach their children at home using textbooks, computer labs, school supplies, on-call resource teachers, field trips and other help provided free by the district. In exchange, the parents enroll their children formally in the district, allowing the public schools to receive their per-pupil funding from the state.

In the San Gabriel Valley, four unified school districts--Walnut Valley, Charter Oak, Monrovia and West Covina--have set up such systems for helping home school students.

So now, when Adrianne’s mother Jan Presnell has questions about reading or math texts, assistance is just a phone call away at Charter Oak Unified School District’s home schooling program.

“At first, I was a bit leery about getting back into the public school system,” said Presnell, who was paying about $80 a month for curriculum sources through a private school. “I thought there wouldn’t be as much freedom, but the teachers have been so supportive and there is still a lot of freedom.”

Whether the reasons are philosophical or practical, more San Gabriel Valley families are opting to teach their children themselves. Some are simply frustrated with the budget-strapped, overcrowded public school system; others want greater control over the values their children absorb.

Adrianne, in her third year of home schooling, appears to be thriving on the one-on-one instruction and customized curriculum taught by her mother and father.

“I like it better than when there were 35 other kids and I had to wait for the teacher to help me,” said the 13-year-old, who went to public schools through the sixth grade and wants to be a zoologist or marine biologist when she grows up.

Jan and Rick Presnell, both products of public schools, decided to teach their four children at home because of their high academic standards, religious convictions and a desire to become more involved in their children’s lives.

“We didn’t decide to do it because it was some trendy thing to do,” said Jan Presnell, who spends about six hours a day teaching her children. “We really wanted them to learn as much as possible on all levels.”

The Presnells are one of 87 families taking advantage of the 4-year-old Charter Oak program, a number that has risen dramatically from the 13 home school families originally involved.

In the program, parents may take advantage of the district’s resource center, where they have access to supplemental texts, arts and crafts supplies, and project ideas. Teachers are available to assist parents, who are welcome to attend periodic educational workshops. And French lessons are offered through Holly Richerd, a French teacher at Sunrise Christian School in Covina who is also a home school parent.

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Walnut Valley, which was the first district in Southern California to start such a program when it began 11 years ago with 30 students, now boasts 120. Credentialed teachers meet with parents in their homes weekly or monthly, depending on their needs. The program offers field trips, workshops on teaching techniques, and offers physical education and music courses at district schools. Parents are given everything a student in class would receive, except a desk and chair.

The newest feature of Walnut’s program is a series of parent workshops led by a district school psychologist. The sessions are designed to provide parents with answers to personality and emotional development questions about their children.

Like the other three districts, Walnut Valley receives $4,217 per student from the state. The program costs about half a million dollars per year, so it pays for itself.

“The district called and invited me into the program after a well-meaning family reported me to child welfare because they thought I was isolating my kids,” said Lydia Padilla, a Walnut parent who has been involved with the program for nine years.

Padilla withdrew her son from public school in the fifth grade, she said, because she needed to monitor his extensive food allergies.

“I realized that home schooling was my only option,” said Padilla, who has gone on to teach her other three children at home. “The district has been very helpful and the resource center is really great. I can check out a lot of things, such as anatomy models, which would be expensive to buy.”

The Walnut district decided to offer the program after observing the success of similar programs in rural communities of Northern California, said Joe Gillentine, director of pupil services for the district.

“We never felt threatened by parents wanting to teach their children at home,” Gillentine said. He expects the number of students in the home school program to continue increasing.

“Some people are concerned about violence in public schools, some are doing it for religious reasons, but the majority just want more control over their children’s curriculum,” he said.

After seeing the success in the Walnut Valley district and losing some students to it, other local districts decided to create similar programs.

“We saw there was a real need, because a lot of our students were going over to Walnut. We wanted to give parents the opportunity to stay at home but to also have good educational guidelines,” said Christine Anderson, one of the two full-time Charter Oak teachers who works with the home school families.

West Covina, which started its home-study program two years ago with seven students, now has 30 children in kindergarten through eighth grade. The Monrovia Unified School District program started quietly 10 years ago with one family. It remained a little-known, unadvertised program until January, 1994, when the district hired two part-time teachers to oversee the effort.

“My third-grade son was totally bored in public school so I went to the district 10 years ago and told them what I wanted to do,” said Teena Ness, a Monrovia parent. “And they said, ‘What can we do to help you?’ ”

Ness’ son Marc went through the home school program and graduated from high school at 15. Her two daughters are still at home.

“Teena Ness was really the parent who brought home schooling to the district,” said Ellen Lavin, coordinator of the home and independent study programs for the Monrovia Unified School District. “She came to us and we decided then that if a parent has made a conscious decision to do this, then we want to help them to the best of our ability.”

The program now has 26 students.

“Before I started working with the district, I just sort of made it up as I went along,” said Robin Dolan, a Monrovia parent whose three children have been enrolled in the program for a year and a half. “My 14-year-old went to public school through third grade and he was doing fine, he was just really bored. I paid about $75 to $100 a month for different curriculum sources, but when I heard about the district’s program, I decided to give it a try.”

Despite these successful arrangements, the majority of San Gabriel Valley school districts do not offer home-study programs.

“Unless there are credentialed teachers doing the teaching, we are not supportive of (home study programs),” said Bruce Matsui, deputy superintendent of the Pasadena Unified School District. “I’m not going to go to any old guy to get my appendix out, and it’s the same thing with teaching. Teaching is a profession of professionals, and we want to make sure that our students are protected.”

“Philosophically, I have some concerns,” said Ronald J. Leon, superintendent of the Rowland Unified School District, who has considered the idea of a home school program. “There are exceptions to everything, but I wouldn’t want my child educated by someone who wasn’t trained, and I would be concerned about the legality of such programs.’

According to the state Department of Education, it’s a legal option for students to work through independent study programs in which students get their assignments and grades from a teacher but can do the work at home. Home independent study programs fall under the same guidelines, except grading is optional.

“It’s the work that generates the state funding. It doesn’t matter what they call it, as long as the student is turning in assignments, pursuing the district curriculum and working under the supervision of a teacher,” said Lynn Hartzler, consultant on independent study and education options for the state.

For families not enrolled in one of the 661 school districts statewide that offer either independent or home independent study programs, California law is laissez faire. There is no law against home schooling and few regulations. Parents are required to file affidavits with the state Department of Education listing their homes as private schools, but many parents don’t bother with that and usually suffer little or no consequence, said Ronald Reid, a research analyst for the California Department of Education.

For the 1993-94 school year, the number of affidavits from individuals who said they operate private schools with five or fewer students in California was about 6,000; Los Angeles County had 253, Reid said.

Reid assumes that most, if not all, are home school parents. Such schools made up 47% of registered private schools statewide in 1989-90, up from 29% in 1983-84. But the 6,000 registered schools probably represent less than half of all home schools, Reid said.

Home schooling families who remain outside the public school system have a choice of at least three private organizations locally that provide support and curriculum assistance, as well as several informal support groups.

Carolyn Forte is a home school parent who also runs an organization to help other parents. She guides 50 area families to a variety of curriculum sources and plans weekly field trips. Forte offers a free support group, but she charges an annual fee of $135 for educational materials and information.

Forte, a former public school teacher in Monterey Park, has been teaching her two daughters, 15 and 17, at home for 13 years.

“I always felt stuck in the classroom. I wanted to take kids out into the real world to learn,” Forte said. “I’m not doing this to get rich; I just want to provide a service that will help parents educate their children.”

Marlene and Mike Phillips, who are in their first year of teaching their 6-year-old daughter, Lynn, work with a small support group of Pasadena parents. They argue that learning at home can be just as good or better than regular school.

While most youngsters Lynn’s age are in kindergarten learning their ABCs and how to finger-paint, she is reading Nancy Drew books, studying Spanish and learning about volcanoes in Hawaii, said Marlene Phillips.

Altadena residents Sherry and Joseph Cavallo work with Mountain View Academy of Pasadena, which lists itself as a private school with the state. The 30 families who are members pay $75 a year per child and receive curriculum materials and go on field trips together.

The Cavallos said they chose home schooling for their 10-year-old son, Vincent, because he couldn’t stand the meanness and cliquishness of the private school he used to attend.

“The kids made fun of me because I was too slow in math and reading,” said Vincent as he patiently multiplied fractions at the dining room table.

“We were both frustrated,” said Sherry Cavallo, who devotes several hours a day to teaching Vincent and her 7-year-old son, Nicholas. “But now he’s caught up. He goes at his own rate and he doesn’t feel frustrated. And since I was already teaching Vincent, we decided to try it with Nicholas as well.”

Parents who teach their children at home say they have an advantage in that there is no separation between the classroom and the rest of the world.

“Learning is happening all the time,” Cavallo said.