Simi Schools in Throes of Tumult, Hope

As the 1996 school calendar lurches to a close, school administrators are looking back in amazement--and forward with hope.

It was, they agree, one uproarious year for the county’s largest school district. And even more changes are afoot.

Supt. Mary Beth Wolford and her staff have launched plans that--if successful--would transform Simi Valley Unified from top to bottom. They hope to:

* Restructure the high schools to take ninth-graders out of junior high and put them into a college-prep atmosphere.

* Open a magnet high school devoted to technology and the performing arts.

* Redraw school boundaries to absorb population growth in the city’s east and west ends.

* Add afternoon sessions to kindergarten.

* Wire the entire school system for computers.

If the changes are accomplished, they will stand in contrast to the troubles of this year, the most tumultuous ever, according to Wolford. During the last nine months:

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Vicious union contract squabbles almost boiled over into a teachers’ strike.

Swelling population and endless delays in building a school for Wood Ranch worsened classroom overcrowding in Simi’s west end.

Sharp criticism and angry debate roiled around unpopular--and some say long overdue--plans to add ninth-graders to the city’s three-year high schools to match California’s four-year standard.

Noisy, highly publicized, time-consuming flaps erupted over banned T-shirts, forbidden toy guns, locker searches by drug-sniffing dogs and charges of sexual harassment from a 9-year-old girl.

Yet despite the din, Simi Valley’s nearly 21,000 students continue to progress through school at a better-than-average clip.

Though 88.1% of Ventura County students and only 81.1% of California students finish four years of high school, 89.5% of Simi Valley students earn high school diplomas.

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And 55.2% of Simi Valley graduates enter college, compared with averages of only 50.6% in Ventura County and 49.4% in California.

“I think this has been a very, uh, a very challenging year,” said Wolford, searching for just the right understatement. “A very challenging year.”

Wolford announced she would retire at the end of the calendar year, after board members indicated privately that she might not have enough votes to have her contract extended past 1997. Wolford will leave with two of the three incumbent board members who say they will not seek reelection.

Despite her departure, she thinks the changes now underway will come to fruition. And one of the things that will help those changes come about, Wolford said, is help from the teachers.

After almost hitting the picket lines last fall amid rancorous contract disputes, Wolford said, the teachers union is cooperating closely with her administration to make the plans work.

“We started out the year with what you might call very adversarial negotiations,” she said. “Labor relations were at the lowest point I’ve known in this district. But we’re working together in a positive mode, and we’ve done a lot to turn this around.”

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Teachers ended up with a three-year contract that awarded them two 2% raises.

Union chief Ron Myren agreed with Wolford, and cited one reason for the detente: The Simi Educators Assn. wants to ensure that as the ninth grade shifts into high school, teachers are reassigned comfortably.

“We’re working very closely with the district because neither side wants any problems,” he said. “The district has the right to reconfigure, and it wouldn’t do us any good to keep putting up roadblocks.”

Meanwhile, Simi Valley parents wait and watch. They want to ensure that the school system--with new board members and superintendent--will teach their children well.

“I think that with Wolford leaving . . . and the [high school] restructuring and three open seats on the board, I think we should all look at this as a hopeful thing,” said Donna Prenta, a mother of four and longtime school-board watcher who is considering running for a seat on the panel.

Prenta and other critics have hit the board at times for being long on political infighting and crisis management, and short on detailed planning.

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School board members launched and voted on the magnet high school plan prematurely, Prenta said. Then they hashed out details such as curriculum, budget and plans for handling a shortage of athletic field space at Sequoia Junior High, the school’s future campus.

The high school restructuring plan itself, said board member Debbie Sandland, is ill thought-out--and unpopular.

While restructuring is meant to boost kids toward college earlier in life, Sandland said, there is no clear indication that ninth-graders are learning poorly in junior high, or that a majority of parents want it.

“And it was kind of pushed down the throats of the community,” she said. “When I ran for the school board four years ago, I ran against restructuring and reconfiguration. I spent less than $1,000 on my campaign and I got the largest number of votes, which gives you an indication of what people think of the idea.

“I think if the board . . . had the guts to put it to a vote of the people,” she added, “it would not have become a priority.”

With such broad changes ahead, Simi Valley parents should grow even more vigilant over how the district is run, Prenta said.

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“Right now, we should all be watching very closely,” she said. “We have an opportunity right now to be either complacent and let it go and not be happy with what we have, or to accept ownership and make the district what we want it to be.”

Yet observers say it is not what parents want of the district, but how they go after it that has caused the conflict.

Unlike many other districts in Ventura County, Simi Valley has suffered a steady diet of noisy board meetings, vitriolic letters to the editor and name-calling directed at board members.

The question, says Ventura County Schools Supt. Charles Weis, is whether Wolford’s design for the future will crumble under mounting criticism from increasingly worried parents or ongoing quarreling on the school board.

The current board, which often votes in a 3-2 split, is deeply divided over core issues such as redistricting and the magnet school.

“I still think it’s very healthy to have a debate among the board,” Sandland said. “We represent a cross-section of the community, and we’re a diverse group, and I think we’re going to disagree.”

Said board member Norm Walker, who has often voted on the opposite side of the issues from Sandland: “We don’t debate these issues very well anymore. There is, many times, a lack of civility to the discourse.

“I’m hopeful that the wheel is going to turn the other way,” he said. “But it seems to me that almost any issue that comes up these days evokes an almost vitriolic response from any segment of the community. . . . I think the issues are resolvable if we agree that people can disagree and still not be evil people.”

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Simi Valley parents were not always so critical, nor was the board so divided, said Weis and Wolford.

Ten years ago or more, Simi Valley Unified School District board members often kept their seats for more than 20 years. Board meetings were quiet and businesslike affairs. Parents trusted the board to run things right.

“Now we tend to have boards that turn over more frequently,” Wolford said. “It’s a very time-consuming, enormously difficult job, and I think we find it burns board members out.”

But back then, parents had fewer concerns about gangs, weapons on campus and other safety issues, Weis said. Because parents are more anxious and demanding, the district’s job has grown more complex.

The fatal 1994 on-campus stabbing of a Valley View High student by a classmate galvanized parents’ fears, he said, and each new crisis, controversy or issue has only fueled complaints about the district.

“During this time, things have been very tumultuous,” Weis said. “Wolford’s predecessor, Robert Purvis, came in and spent about three years analyzing the structure and trying to educate people about what might be, and kind of stirred the pot.”

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Purvis retired in 1992, partly out of frustration with the shrinking schools budget.

“He left and Mary Beth came in, and she got the boiling pot, and she’s been trying to make stew out of it,” Weis said. “And I think she’s done a good job of it.

“But the level of public scrutiny, the level of public knowledge, even the level of protagonism in board meetings has grown significantly,” he said. “People in Simi Valley . . . really, really believe kids are very, very important. And they’ll do anything to make sure they get what they need.”

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How Simi Stacks Up

For all the turmoil and controversy suffered this year by Ventura County’s largest school system, the Simi Valley Unified School District still keeps more students in high school and sends more to college than both the county and state averages.

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% high school % attending District Enrollment* Annual budget** graduates*** college**** Conejo Valley 18,858 $111,249,322 94.5 62.6 Fillmore 3,406 $17,855,787 93.8 49.7 Moorpark 6,480 $34,190,506 89.7 51.2 Oak Park 2,954 $25,380,220 99.3 66.6 Ojai 4,064 $17,207,397 84.1 47.8 Oxnard Union 14,451 $76,603,678 90.2 44.6 Santa Paula 1,312 $8,882,135 82.5 45.1 Simi Valley 20,749 $141,411,083 89.5 55.2 Ventura 17,458 $99,613,459 85.8 47.0 VENTURA COUNTY n/a na/ 88.1 50.6 STATEWIDE n/a n/a 81.1 49.4

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* Average daily attendance

** 1995-96 fiscal year

*** Based on 1993-94 dropouts

**** Based on 1993-94 graduates

Sources: California Department of Education, Ventura County superintendent of schools