The Good Life : Family: People stay in Ventura County, or move here, because they think it’s a healthy, safe place to raise children who will grow up with traditional values.

Susanna Arce eagerly fled to the big city when she was young. But bound by the ties of seven generations, she returned to live her life in Ventura County.

“I value family and I value small-town life,” said Arce, 52, mother of six and an Ojai educator for 28 years.

Jack and Roxanne Skeene bought their acre of good earth on a Santa Rosa Valley hillside, only to be followed by brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts and mother and father--all from the San Fernando Valley.

“This county really is an oasis for families,” said artist Roxanne Skeene, the mother of three young boys.

And when Colleen Briner-Schmidt and husband Doug pulled up stakes in suburban Chicago to move their family to Southern California, they settled in Thousand Oaks.

“We made a really good choice,” said Briner-Schmidt, 40, a teacher at her daughter’s Conejo Valley elementary school. “For Southern California, Ventura County is a good place to live. The air is cleaner, the schools are better. And there are lots of opportunities for children to learn and explore.”

Over the last dozen years, the Briner-Schmidts and the Skeenes have discovered the qualities that have defined this county for decades--those that brought Arce back and that still lure disillusioned parents from the big city in search of a better life.

They found a privileged place of mountains and ocean, small towns and traditional values.

Taken as a whole, they found a county that is exceptionally safe, well-educated and financially secure. Kids are healthier than the norm. More families own their homes. Two-parent families still predominate. About eight of every 10 residents live with relatives as part of a family household.

And on a practical level, most local communities seem to serve their children well. From Simi Valley to Ventura, calendars are packed with youth sports, art camps, kid clubs and special events meant to produce youngsters who are well-rounded and too busy to get into trouble.

“People move here for family life,” said Jay Grigsby, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club of Camarillo, himself a refugee from Orange County. “There’s more of a sense of community. People seem genuinely concerned about each other’s children.”

Even poverty in Ventura County is generally more benign than in much of California, because problems are not so great that they have overwhelmed institutions that hold society together: police, schools, health and social service agencies, churches and charitable groups.

“Collectively we’re determined not to become just another suburb of L.A. County, with all its problems,” said Sheriff Larry Carpenter, a lifelong resident of Fillmore. “We feel that it’s not too late, that we can still make a difference.”

The fact that Ventura County consistently ranks as the safest urban area in the West is not lost on those who live here.

“This is sure a different place than when I came here 20 years ago,” said Dr. Gary Feldman, county public health director, who raised two children in Ventura. “But people still care about each other. And it’s safe. Quite frankly, that’s important.”

As is often the case, safety and affluence go hand-in-hand. Ventura County ranks sixth among the state’s 58 counties for family income, with a median of $57,900, according to an update of the 1990 U.S. census.

Only three counties--Marin, San Mateo and Placer--had fewer residents living below the poverty line, the census found. And Ventura County’s poverty rate actually dropped during the 1980s as white-collar commuter communities boomed in the east county.

“We bought our first house out here in 1984,” recalled Cindy Wilkinson, 40, a Simi Valley mother of two daughters. “For one thing, I loved the blue skies. I figured it wasn’t that far away from work in Canoga Park. And the schools were better out here than in L.A. County.”

Indeed, the county’s relative wealth gives parents an edge even in dealing with American family traumas of the 1990s--increasing youth violence and drug use, teen pregnancy, single-parent homes and a teen-age morality sometimes anchored as much in peer acceptance and MTV as in parental standards.

About 39% of parents responding to a Times Poll in Ventura County said that the simple fact that their children live here gives them a stronger moral and ethical base.

“I think that this area seems to be very conservative and religious,” said David Arimura, 33, an Oxnard flower broker who lives in Camarillo. “It seems to have a lot of small-town qualities.”

A statewide study by the Oakland-based advocacy group Children Now ranks this county above average in 13 of 14 categories surveyed to gauge the health, safety, education and security of California’s children.

“Thanks to the hard work of folks in Ventura County, kids are doing well,” said Amy Abraham, policy director at Children Now. “We see that across the issues, and that’s very positive.”

The county’s good life, however, can exact a toll in fatigue, frayed nerves and guilt.

Keeping up with the Joneses--and with their own high expectations--often means that both parents hold jobs, spending long hours at work and not with their children.

Three of every four local mothers of school-age children earn a paycheck--a figure high compared to the state as a whole.

Many parents say they are torn by conflicting obligations: Should they provide financial security or sacrifice earning power for more time to make sure their children have a clear sense of right and wrong?

“We did the swing shift. Their dad would be home during the day and I would be home at night,” said Rebel Thomson, 32, a title company supervisor in Ventura. “It was hard, but I think the reason that kids are failing in school is because mom is not at home. It gets to the point where I wonder, ‘Why am I working. What am I working for?’ ”

And many parents say they no longer believe the notion popular for a generation that the quality of time with children is as important as its quantity.

The Times Poll found that nearly three of every five local working mothers would rather stay home and take care of their children than hold down a job. And 38% of fathers said they would make the same choice if they could.

“I think women are opting for part-time work, realizing maybe they don’t need the extra money, maybe they need the extra time,” said Carrie Rothstein-Fisch, a child development professor at Cal State Northridge and Ventura parent who balances the demands of work and job herself. “And it’s not just for their children, but for themselves as well.”

Ventura County’s good life comes, too, with a steep price tag. It is a price many poorer residents just cannot afford.

As a result, local communities are divided sharply between the haves and have-nots, which usually means between white citizens who speak English well and Latino immigrants who do not.

Geographically, this division reflects the difference between the emerging white-collar cities of the east county and the historic west county communities of the Santa Clara Valley and Oxnard Plain.

Ventura County’s regional reputation as an affluent county with little crime and good schools is based in significant part on the upscale demographics of the east county.

Standing alone, the west county reflects the income, racial diversity, crime rate and housing characteristics of California as a whole.

Nearly half the families in Santa Paula, Fillmore, Oxnard and Port Hueneme, for example, earned less than $25,000 a year in 1990--twice the rate of poverty and working poor found in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley.

Still, 86% of parents in the west county are satisfied with the quality of life in their communities, the Times Poll found.

“I know there are a lot of poor people around here, but they seem to really care,” said Christian Willadsen, a Navy electronics technician in Port Hueneme. “When we first got here there was graffiti on the walls, but people got together and made it disappear.”

“It’s not a matter of money,” said Willadsen, a 36-year-old father of two. “It’s a matter of doing the right thing.”

Even in the more diverse west county, the census showed that races are segregated more than ever before--the rich in one part of town and the poor in another.

“We continue to see a racial and economic segregation of minorities within our communities,” said Jorge Garcia, a Simi Valley father of three who is dean of humanities at Cal State Northridge.

Garcia sees the lack of cultural interaction as a principal drawback about living in Ventura County. “I have nothing against a sanctuary,” he said, “but they can be relatively sterile.”

The pay-as-you-go nature of most local activities for children--from swim clubs to marching bands--emphasizes the same economic disparity.

Youngsters in Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Camarillo and Ventura generally have the $50 it takes for tennis lessons and special classes. But the same often is not true in Oxnard, Santa Paula and Fillmore.

While Thousand Oaks is blessed with a diverse municipal Teen Center, Oxnard boarded up restrooms in public parks years ago and closed the swimming pool in its poorest barrio until private donations reopened it. It is now maintained, at least temporarily, by federal grant.

“I wish we had not ever had to do any of those things,” Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez said. “But if you’re comparing us to Thousand Oaks, we’re a very poor city.”

When a poor city divides its budget, he said, it picks police and fire services and streets and sewers over parks.

Even as most county newcomers count their blessings, old-timers, especially those in the west county, note an erosion in the quality of life. They feel their county is neither as safe nor as comfortable as it once was.

Money to pay for services for the poor is being cut even as the need for those services rises dramatically.

Random gang violence now occurs in every city; libraries have cut their hours, and schools cannot find nearly enough bilingual teachers to instruct immigrant students whose numbers rise each year.

“When I first came here, I thought I had landed in the Garden of Eden,” said Joyce Kennedy, director of the Ventura Campus of Cal State Northridge. “Now I’m concerned about the insidiousness, the creeping in of crime. I’m deeply concerned about the closing of our libraries.”

Many residents--old and new--also reluctantly acknowledge a lingering racism in this county fostered by cultural separation.

Children, parents and educators, in fact, comment on how casual some students still are about using racial slurs--and how their peers fail to challenge such epithets as wrong.

Susanna Arce, a descendant of a Spanish soldier who arrived here in 1781 and whose great-great-grandfather once owned all of the Ojai Valley, said even her children have felt the sting of racial prejudice.

“There have been racial tensions in the last 10 years,” she said. “There is an insularity here that often breeds a certain type of superior attitude, sort of a white superiority attitude.”

Even residents such as the Briner-Schmidts, who are generally pleased with the county they have claimed as their own, note an unsettling change in the air. And they complain of a lack of financial support for schools.

Dozens of children’s activities covered by basic taxes in her native Illinois all cost extra here, Colleen Briner-Schmidt said.

“At first everything was $30 a month, then it was $40 and now it’s $50,” she said. “This is one thing I don’t like about California.”

Nor was Briner-Schmidt pleased when a carload of teen-agers fired shots in her scenic Newbury Park neighborhood last year in retaliation for an after-school brawl at a Westlake park.

“I had to teach my children if they saw a carful of kids to come inside immediately,” she said. “Also if they heard gunshots they need to drop. I never thought I would need to teach my kids that.”

Despite recent changes and emerging problems, however, Ventura County residents still overwhelmingly think that their county is a good place to live and to raise their children. “This is such a lovely place,” said Professor Rothstein-Fisch, who with her dentist husband, Bryan, made a conscious decision to emphasize family over career and moved to Ventura to do it.

“It was a perfect decision for us,” she said. “I feel very lucky that my children can grow up in a time and place where they are safe. That is astoundingly important.”

Next Sunday: Ventura County’s schools are doing well, but concerns are growing about their future.

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Families in Profile

Ventura County has a strong family orientation, with families making up 77% of households compared to 69% statewide. It also is wealthier, healthier and has more two-parent families than the state norm.

THE FAMILIES

More than three-fourths of Ventura County households are families, or relatives living together: Family households by type:

Single male, with/kids or relatives:

Ventura County: 4.9%

State: 6.3%

Single female with/kids or relatives:

Ventura County: 12.0%

State: 16.1%

Married couples:

Ventura County: 83.2%

State: 77.6%

WHERE THE KIDS ARE

Percent of total children in Ventura County, by community:

Oxnard: 23.9%

Simi Valley: 15.4%

Thousand Oaks: 14.2%

Unincorporated: 12.6%

Ventura: 11.8%

Camarillo: 7.0%

Moorpark: 4.7%

Santa Paula: 4.1%

Port Hueneme: 3.1%

Fillmore: 2.2%

Ojai: 1.0%

THE HAVES...THE HAVE NOTS

Average incomes:

(Ventura County)

Singles mothers/with children - $23,506

Single fathers/with children - $39,191

Married couples/with children - $62,136

*

Percent of children living in poverty by race:

Latino - 14.8%

Black - 8.7%

Asian - 3.8%

White - 2.6%

*

Percent of families earning more than $75,000 (1990):

Countywide: 23.1%

Thousand Oaks: 37.4%

Moorpark: 32.7%

Simi Valley: 26.0%

Camarillo: 25.9%

Ventura: 18.5%

Ojai: 17.1%

Oxnard: 11.2%

Port Hueneme: 8.8%

Santa Paula: 8.6%

Fillmore: 6.8%

WHO THE KIDS ARE

About 197,000 children live in Ventura County today.

County: Race/ethnicity of children:

American Indian - 0.8%

Other: 1.1%

Black: 2.6%

Asian: 5.5%

Latino: 35.0%

White: 55.0%

THEIR HEALTH

Ventura County ranks high for care of babies.

*

Late or no prenatal care:

- Ventura County: 4.2%

- State: 5.9%

Low birth weight:

- Ventura County: 5.2%

- State: 5.8%

Infant mortality per 1,000 live births:

- Ventura County: 5.5%

- State: 6.8%

Immunizations of toddlers by age 2:

- Ventura County: 66.7%

- State: 55.4%

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BY THE NUMBERS

Total family households: 166,925

% of Population under 18: 27.4% (Statewide: 26%)

Median family income: $57,900 (Statewide: $46,600

Mothers Who Work While Raising School-Age Children: 76.3% (Statewide: 72.1%)

Nuclear families (Two parents live with their own children.): 32.7% (Statewide: 26.5%)

School Children Who Speak Little or No English: 18.6% (Statewide: 23%)

Babies born to unwed parents: 20.5% (Statewide: 33%)

Children in Foster Care Per 1,000: 3.0 (Statewide: 9.4)

Juvenile Violent Crime Arrests

More than doubled 1983 to 1993 to: 681