NEWPORT BEACH : Schools to Guide More Minorities to Sciences

At the request of federal civil-rights officials, Newport-Mesa Unified School District has agreed to adopt policies that will increase the number of minority students in upper-level mathematics and science classes.

The U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office said that only a small number of minority students attending Newport-Mesa schools are in trigonometry, calculus or physics classes.

The district agreed to make a thorough investigation of policies, classes and teachers and to submit a detailed improvement plan to the Department of Education by Feb. 1.

District officials said that, though the request by the federal agency caught them by surprise, they are glad to comply.

“The whole purpose is for us to get more qualified minority students into those classes,” Supt. Mac Bernd said Thursday. “And that is a very attractive goal.”

The federal agency chooses school districts at random for informal investigations. Tom Jacobson, Newport-Mesa’s director of secondary education, said one of the reasons for the low minority enrollment in college preparatory classes is that the ethnic makeup of the district’s students has changed dramatically in the last decade.

“When I arrived at Corona del Mar, 3% to 4% of the students were ethnic minorities,” said Jacobson, a former principal at Corona del Mar High. “Today, that figure is about 12%.”