Proposal for Basic School May Ease Up on Uniforms

Rachelle Garcia and Cassie Coggins are all for it. But a few feet away, Jonathan Daniels shakes his head.

“Uniforms are cool,” Cassie said as Rachelle nodded.

“No way,” Jonathan said.

The Will Rogers Elementary fourth-graders were reacting to a plan by district officials to turn their school into a so-called back-to-basics facility this fall.

But in an effort to drum up support for the plan, school officials are watering down the most debated of the proposals.

“I don’t want to let the program die because of uniforms,” Ventura Unified School District Supt. Joseph Spirito said.

Besides mandating some kind of dress code, the basic school would provide a “rigorous educational program for students” and put high expectations on students, staff and parents, school officials said.

For instance, parents would be asked to volunteer at the school for at least 12 hours each semester, the curriculum would emphasize homework and traditional methods of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.

The nearly 440 kindergarten through fifth-grade students already at Will Rogers will have priority enrollment at the basic school. It will incorporate an additional three classrooms from an adjoining adult education school providing access to about 90 additional students.

So far, about 50 parents from outside the Will Rogers attendance area have expressed interest in the basic school idea, and none of those whose children are currently attending the school has asked to leave, said Will Rogers Principal Jose Montano.

But concerns over uniforms remain.

“I think the ideas behind a back-to-basic school are great,” said Jennifer Cox, PTA president at Will Rogers. “I like the idea of having parents involved. The biggest problem is uniforms. I wish they would spend more time improving the curriculum rather than telling us how to dress.”

Montano and Spirito both said the issue of uniforms would not derail the overall plan.

After consulting with his staff, Montano is proposing blue or white polo shirts with a school logo and dark trousers or skirts as the school’s uniform. He vowed to consult with parents before making a final decision.

But even a code that calls for polo shirts may not cut it. Parents would probably insist on a looser definition of a dress code that would allow students to wear a “light colored shirt and a dark skirt or trousers,” Cox said.

Meanwhile, other schools in the county are moving toward uniforms. In the Hueneme School District, 90% of parents polled at Williams School said they would favor voluntary school uniforms, and two schools in the Rio Elementary School District are considering uniforms as well.

In neighboring Los Angeles County, two elementary schools have adopted uniforms in recent months, and last month the Long Beach Unified School District was praised by President Clinton for mandating uniforms since 1994.

Teachers at Will Rogers are supportive of the overall plan for the basic school,

“I like the idea,” said Danielle Brown who teaches a bilingual first-grade class. “I think we all are in support. Nobody has asked to transfer out.”

And outside the school, several parents also spoke in favor of the basic school proposal.

But throughout the school district, many teachers are less than enthusiastic.

“We are not necessarily against the basic school idea,” said John Weiss, president of the Ventura Unified Education Assn., the teachers union. “But it’s the way it has been presented. Our teachers heard what the objectives of the basic school are and said, ‘We do that now.’ So what is the difference? We feel all our sites are basic schools.”

These concerns were echoed by school board President Cliff Rodrigues, who supports basic schools.

“I don’t want the message to get out that other schools are not stressing discipline, parental involvement and strict academics,” he said.

School officials admit the differences between the basic school and other institutions are small, but they said having explicit academic goals will make a difference.

“We put down our expectations in writing,” Montano said. “We sign a contract with our students and parents. It is like having school-wide goals.”

Parents of basic school students would agree to volunteer at school in activities ranging from helping at the school library to attending school assemblies or tutoring students.

But educators who criticize the plan wonder whether the basic school would draw all the parents interested in being involved in their children’s education and deplete other schools of such sought-after parents.

Spirito dismissed those arguments.

“We are talking about 90 new kids,” he said. “I doubt we will be stealing all the parents in the district who are involved in their kids’ education.”

Spirito got the idea for the back-to-basics school during a 1993 campaign by conservative critics of public education to pass a school voucher initiative that would have allowed parents to use taxpayer dollars to send their kids to private schools.

While the proposition was defeated, school administrators were left with a sense that parents wanted more choice in their children’s education.

“This [the basic school plan] is a result of people asking for more choice,” Spirito said. “It came from the grass roots.”

Spirito said he hopes other district schools will follow suit if the project succeeds.

And at least some parents think it will.

“I think it will be a better school,” said PTA President Cox. “It’s a step in the right direction.”