Ex-Buena Pupils Start Class Across Town

By 7 a.m. Tuesday, the yellow school bus had crossed deep into Bulldog territory, jerking to a stop every few minutes to collect bleary-eyed students on the first day of school.

Because of overcrowding at Buena High--home of the Bulldogs--in east Ventura, these teenage passengers were now Cougars, traveling across town past their neighborhood campus to Ventura High.

As bus No. 67 lumbered over the steep grades of the city’s eastern hillside communities to pick up about three dozen students, complaints of having to wake up extra early mingled with fears of leaving behind friends at Buena.

“I know no one at Ventura,” said Morgan Sharp, a 15-year-old sophomore who spent his first year at Buena. “We’re like starting all over.”

Cade Mulford, another 15-year-old sophomore who had also attended Buena for a year, rolled his eyes and quipped: “It’s like being a freshman all over again.”

Except for the transfer of 185 students in Ventura and a shoving match at Oxnard’s Rio Mesa High School that ended up in the three-day suspension of two male students, six school districts in western Ventura County opened their doors Tuesday with little more than the small disruptions typical on the first day of class.

School begins today at another six districts including Moorpark Unified and Simi Valley Unified, while students in Conejo Valley Unified, Oak Park Unified and Mupu Elementary near Santa Paula won’t start classes until Thursday.

Thanks to a $971-million state initiative to reduce the student-to-teacher ratio, most county first-graders and some students in other elementary grades are beginning a new school year in classrooms with no more than 20 pupils.

And E.O. Green Junior High School in Port Hueneme became one of the latest among the more than half a dozen schools in western Ventura County to encourage students to wear school uniforms to focus more on studies and less on fashion.

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“It means that youngsters are being equipped for today’s world,” Deloris Carn, principal of E.O. Green, said of the various new education-related initiatives this year. “It is also providing an environment so that teachers can more effectively work with youngsters.”

Improving the learning environment for the students is the reason Ventura Unified School District trustees cite for voting in February to bus the group of students who would have attended Buena High to less-crowded Ventura High.

According to district enrollment projections, Buena would have opened with more than the 2,187 students it was built to handle. Built for 2,120 students, Ventura had only 1,796 last year before the shift.

About 2,034 students attended Buena on Tuesday, while about 2,000 went to Ventura, but school officials said the number of students at both schools will rise in coming weeks as students return from summer vacation.

“If we hadn’t done this, there would be no way of handling” the overcrowding, said trustee Jim Wells, who is part of a large-scale planning effort to come up with long-term solutions to the overcrowding problem, including possibly building a new high school. “We made a very hard decision, a decision that we did not like to make, but that was for the benefit of all the students.”

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About a third of the students riding the bus piloted through the morning mist by veteran driver Linda Driggs said they liked the idea of attending Ventura High, despite living within Buena High’s sphere of influence.

“Classes aren’t as jam-packed as they are at Buena,” Chase Compton, a 14-year-old freshman, said during the 30-minute ride to Ventura High. “I am not complaining. It’s a really nice school, and the teachers are really nice.”

But the majority said that because other friends and siblings were attending a rival school, they believed they would have trouble at first fitting in, not to mention trouble figuring out their school loyalties.

“My brother is the star running back on Buena’s varsity [football] team, and I don’t get to watch him,” said freshman Lauren Kleefisch, 15. “I don’t even know which football team to root for.”

Many parents who lobbied the board to reverse its decision remain upset at the busing policy, particularly a provision that allows Buena High faculty and employees to send their kids to the school, even if they don’t live in areas near the campus.

“I think that is so unfair,” said Ellie Dikes, whose 15-year-old daughter, Kristin, is now a sophomore at Ventura High. “It is not fair for someone living out of the area to take my daughter’s or other student’s place.”

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Supt. Joseph Spirito said the board normally allows faculty and employees at any school in the city to enroll their children at the institution of their choice. But because of Buena’s high enrollment, the board permitted only Buena faculty and employees to send their children there.

The number of children of Buena faculty and employees who attend the school but do not live near the campus is about 10, he said.

Enrollment “was given as a courtesy,” Spirito said.

Although Kristin Dikes still resents the board for making her transfer to Ventura, she predicted after her first day of school that she would probably get used to the new place.

“I didn’t have any problems,” Kristin said. “I liked my teachers, and everybody seemed nice enough. But it’s hard getting there, and it’s hard not seeing anybody I recognize.”

The first day of school was perhaps a little easier for some students at Poinsettia Elementary School in Ventura, which trimmed the sizes of its first-grade classes to no more than 20 students.

Although state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) dropped by the school to talk about the lower student-to-teacher ratio, the politician ended up in a conversation with first-grader Christopher Wohlford about lunch.

“I got pudding, you don’t,” Christopher told the lawmaker.

The school hired two new teachers and converted other rooms into teaching space to accommodate the two newly created first-grade classes.

“The instruction will be more individualized,” O’Connell said, referring to the lower student-to-teacher ratio. “You will see a higher quality of instruction.”