New Campus in Oxnard Frustrates, Amazes Students

Teachers were still unpacking books and lab equipment. Students scurried to figure out where to go for a snack. And everyone spent the day trying to tell one place from another on a campus so new that the buildings weren’t yet labeled.

The new Oxnard High School opened for business (and math and English) Tuesday as 28,000 students returned to schools all over west Ventura County. They will be joined today by another 75,000 students when classes open from Thousand Oaks to Ojai.

Students in the Oak Park Unified School District will start school Thursday, along with pupils in the tiny Mupu Elementary School District near Santa Paula.

The Oxnard campus is the county’s newest showplace, a $33-million complex that replaced the old 5th Street facility, and amazed and frustrated about 2,400 students on opening day.

“It’s really nice,” said David Lefler, 16, a junior. “But it’s going to be really confusing for about a week.”

Day 1 proceeded with few snags in the 15,200-student Ventura Unified School District, said Patricia Chandler, assistant superintendent of educational services.

Enrollment exceeded projections at Elmhurst School and Buena High School, Chandler said. Administrators are working to provide classroom space and teachers to take up the growth, she said.

“Any additional staff that is required will be dealt with shortly.”

At Balboa Middle School in east Ventura, teachers assumed the role of traffic cop as waves of students began arriving. Sixth-graders were herded into the school auditorium with their parents for a pep talk by Principal Helena Reaves.

Responsible students set goals and they plan their time, she told them. They study every day, take notes in class and have the tools they need. They keep their commitments and get ready ahead of time.

When she was done, the students were sent to class and the parents were sent home.

“The beginning of the year is always exciting,” said Reaves, who delivered flowers to all of her teachers. “It never gets old.”

At the midmorning break, a group of eighth-grade girls stood in the hallway comparing class schedules.

Unlike many of their sixth-grade counterparts, the girls said they had no anxiety about the first day of school. For this year, at least, they are at the top of the middle school heap.

“I remember in sixth grade I was really nervous,” 12-year-old Lauren Sapp said. “But now it’s really fun. You get to see all of your friends and you’re the oldest one at school.”

At Oxnard High School, the students were adjusting to unfamiliar surroundings.

“It’s weird,” Courtney Relph, a junior, said as she helped unpack lab equipment in her chemistry class.

“It doesn’t feel like school yet. At our old school, we were used to the way it looked. The murals, the paintings. It’s going to take awhile to get used to this.”

Signs around the school said “Welcome Back” and “Keep OHS Clean.”

Rene Rios, 17, said he thinks that the 52 acres of 11 buildings, athletic fields and grounds will remain free of the graffiti that scarred the old campus because students are proud of their new surroundings.

“It’s ba-a-a-d,” he said. “We like it. It’s so big.”

As a senior, Rene said the new school has special significance for him.

“I’ll tell my kids when I get older that I was in the first class to graduate from the new high school.”

Not everybody was oohing and ahhing over the new campus. Many students chattered about teachers, boyfriends and summer adventures.

“Hey, Boogerface!” one teen-ager yelled to a friend. “How was your summer?”