TIMES POLL : Schools Rated Top Reason for Good Quality of Life

Despite an underlying fear of campus violence, parents and students alike rate Ventura County’s schools as the best thing about raising families here, according to a Times Poll.

The poll found that 85% of the county’s junior and senior high school students rate their schools as good or excellent.

In fact, more secondary students consider schools the best thing about growing up in Ventura County, ahead of any other attribute--recreational activities, friends, the ocean and safety.

Three-fourths say they enjoy going to school. And even more say they plan to go to college, despite an attendance rate below the state average.

“Teachers make sure you know how to do things before you’re left on your own. They don’t just leave you hanging,” said poll respondent Carla Alcantar, 13, a June graduate of E.O. Green School in the Hueneme Elementary School District.

Carla, a farm worker’s daughter and former bilingual classroom student, now gets nearly all A’s. “I plan to go to college,” she said, “and maybe become a teacher.”

Parents are even more enthusiastic, especially in the east county, where 38% say their children’s schools are excellent.

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Countywide, nearly nine of every 10 parents say their children attend good schools. And parents rate quality schools ahead of low crime, good recreation and clean air as the best aspect of raising children here.

“We wanted a better place to raise our children,” recalled Lori Beving, 46, of Camarillo, who moved with husband Doug from the San Fernando Valley more than two decades ago.

Today, with the couple’s youngest child a Rio Mesa High senior, Beving said she could hardly be more impressed with local schools.

“The [elementary school] teachers were always willing to work with the parents,” she said. “And my daughter really loves Rio Mesa. She likes the different types of people that make it like the real world. Overall, the teachers are young and a lot of them graduated from Rio Mesa.”

The Los Angeles Times Poll, managed by Assistant Poll Director Susan H. Pinkus, interviewed 1,224 parents and 460 children between the ages of 12 and 17 in Ventura County. The poll, conducted July 29 through Aug. 7, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for parents and 5 percentage points for children.

The poll found not only widespread agreement that the county’s schools are good but parents who are intensely involved with their children’s education.

More than two-thirds of parents say they help their youngsters with homework at least three times a week. About the same number say they volunteer at school at least occasionally. One-third say they volunteer once a week or more.

The large majority of parents also say they attend most of their children’s school events, such as class plays, sporting events and open houses. About half say they go to all school events.

“If you’re involved with your children’s lives, it keeps them on the straight and narrow,” said James Malch, 43, a purchasing manager from Newbury Park.

“By being involved, you get to know the system,” added Malch, who with his wife, Karen, has worked in numerous Conejo Valley educational and youth activities. “You know which are the good teachers and the bad teachers, which programs you need to be involved in and which to avoid. And the administrators know you, so when you have a complaint they know it’s legitimate.”

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High parent participation crosses geographic and ethnic lines. But some differences stand out. Latino parents are more involved in school parent-teacher groups than white parents, 43% to 32%. But 55% of white parents say they attend all of their children’s school activities, compared to 33% of Latinos.

Despite this general enthusiasm for education, The Times Poll also found that many students believe that some of their classmates are armed and dangerous.

About 6% of junior high and high school students believe that at least half of their peers regularly carry a gun, knife or other weapon on campus, according to the poll.

About 21% of secondary school students think that a substantial number of their classmates are armed at school: 2% say that more than half regularly carry a weapon, 4% say half are armed and 15% say less than half but more than a “very few” are regularly armed.

“About half, they bring weapons like guns,” said Rosa Peralta, 16, an Oxnard High School student. “I don’t see them, but sometimes they say they have guns. They have them because the other people have them . . . [and] because they want to think they are bad.”

On the other hand, the poll found that 75% of students believe only “very few” students carry a weapon regularly.

Comments about weapons on campus seem to contradict assertions by 92% of students--88% in the west county and 97% in the east--that they feel safe at school. In fact, Rosa said she feels safe at Oxnard High and has never seen a weapon pulled in a campus fight.

But many of the same students who say they feel safe also express a fear of youth gangs on campus. One of every four students ranks crime, gangs or fighting as the biggest problem students face at school each day. Gangs and crime were also rated the worst things about growing up in Ventura County.

Broad, countywide conclusions about the fear of crime are misleading, however, since such concerns are split as unequally as the incomes of the white-collar east county and the working-class west.

In the east, for example, students feel that too much homework and bad teachers are at least as big a problem as gangs. Just 2% of east county students say they feel unsafe at school, compared to 12% in the west county.

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And 20% of students in the west county feel threatened by gangs at school, while only 11% in the east are fearful.

Even in the west county, there are different levels of concern: Latino students worry much more about their safety than their white counterparts.

Nearly one in four Latino students thinks gangs are a campus threat, about twice the figure for whites. Similarly, 18% of Latino parents say their children’s schools are unsafe, compared to 8% of white parents.

And boys feel safer than girls, with 90% of boys saying gang activity is no threat to 76% for girls.

Educators say that students’ fear of crime and gangs is understandable, given the fatal shootings and stabbings of students in Simi Valley, Ventura and Oxnard in recent years and a violent brawl among students in Westlake last year.

Student expulsions for weapons possession, in fact, are up dramatically in recent years, as are juvenile arrests for the same offense.

But Joanne Black, principal of Hueneme High School in Oxnard, said campuses are generally very safe.

“Basically, our schools have remained pretty well stable as far as safety for several years,” she said. “This is not to say there is not gang activity on campuses, and that’s common to any school. But when you have 80% of kids who say they feel OK, that’s probably an accurate reflection of school today.”