Ethnic Mixing in Lower Grades Pays Later, Students Say

This town doesn’t have three high schools, like Thousand Oaks. Not even two, like Ventura. Here, all students from the five elementary and two middle schools eventually funnel into one campus: Moorpark High School.

Consequently, it is the only school in the Moorpark Unified School District where students aren’t directly affected by decisions trustees make about changing attendance boundaries.

That debate applies to the lower grades, aiming to balance those schools’ ethnic mix.

Yet it’s at the high school level where long-standing efforts to balance campuses ethnically are really paying off, many Moorpark High School students say.

“We have learned to accept other people’s differences and learned to accept other people’s ways of life,” said freshman Alejandro Castro, a Latino who was bused to school in the lower grades. He credits ethnic diversity at the elementary and middle schools for making his high school stronger.

“If we didn’t have that, then a lot of bad things would happen,” Alejandro said. “People are separated for the longest times, and they don’t get to know each other. Then conflicts emerge, and it’s not pretty--like Los Angeles.”

School trustees say those reasons are why they have been pressing so hard to balance schools ethnically.

In a city with racially segregated neighborhoods--midtown is largely Latino, while newer housing tracts to the north and south are predominantly white--school trustees have worked for years to give the campuses a student mix that reflects the district’s overall enrollment.

“It does make a difference,” trustee Tom Baldwin said. “It does pay dividends.”

School board members are joined by at least one other civic leader who supports busing to integrate the campuses.

City Councilman Bernardo Perez said it’s not enough to talk to students about accepting people of different races.

“We can talk about that and our kids will hear us, but they’ll forget,” Perez said. “They still won’t know those individuals until they get a chance to experience other kids of other cultures, and that’s the importance of the configuration that the school board has struggled to maintain.”

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Until 1987, students in the district attended the same schools, moving from one campus to another as they advanced in grade level.

With the opening of Mountain Meadows Elementary in that year, the district for the first time divided elementary students at some grade levels among different campuses.

That’s when busing began to expand upon integration that had occurred naturally.

Today, some elementary and middle school students are bused across town to make sure each campus reflects as closely as possible the district’s overall breakdown: 30% Latino, 63% white, 7% students of other races.

That policy became a hot topic in Moorpark in recent months as trustees considered redrawing attendance boundaries to accommodate opening of the new Walnut Canyon Elementary School and further improve ethnic balance.

Parents from several western neighborhoods protested plans to bus their children, now attending nearby Mountain Meadows or Arroyo West, to the new school.

In the end, trustees voted to leave attendance boundaries alone for at least a year and turn Walnut Canyon into a magnet school that will draw from around the district.

Many parents from these newer neighborhoods say they prefer their children to attend schools nearby and were not told about the district’s busing policy when they bought their homes.

Perez suggested that schools should work with real estate agencies to let potential home buyers know that neighborhood schools might not be an option.

“Get the word out early and let people know,” Perez said. “I may buy this home located conveniently from the school, but my kid may not go there.”

Some Moorpark High students also question the district’s busing policy.

Many, including a number of minority students, said the district spends too much energy mixing students when it should be focusing more on qualified teachers and a strong curriculum.

“I don’t think ethnicity should matter as long as you get a good education,” said junior Paula Paran, who is of Middle Eastern descent. Of busing, Paula said, “That’s so inconvenient for their kids.”

Freshmen Zahra Aljabri, who is black, and Sarah Naguib, who is Egyptian, were chatting in the quad after lunch. Neither said ethnicity should be a top priority for trustees.

“I don’t think it makes a difference,” Zahra said. “Everyone is different, so it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are.” The purpose of school isn’t to socialize with students of all different ethnicities, she said.

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Yet many others at Moorpark High School said that being with students of other races enriches their education both in and out of the classroom. While busing caused them some inconvenience in the lower grades, it was worthwhile, many students said.

“I had to make a whole new group of friends, but at that age, it is traumatic to have all your friends gone,” said Jon Courtney, a white student who was bused to Chaparral Middle School. All his friends from elementary school went to the closer campus, Mesa Verde Middle School.

Jon said busing helps reduce prejudice by introducing students to those of different ethnicities early in life.

“Seeing into the future and how it’s becoming more global . . . I would want a more socially diverse school system,” Jon said. “I think it’s pretty important that people be bused.”

William Ouellette, who is white, said busing helped him make friends with students of other races he wouldn’t have met in his neighborhood and has helped create a sense of unity at the high school.

“You can make awesome friends that live up there and down here and around there,” said William, who adds that he has gained an appetite for salsa and an interest in Virgin Mary icons from his Latino pals. “We have blacks, whites, those with pierced ears, but we’re all one big group.”

Some students say integration even helps them learn.

For instance, members of the school’s Academic Decathlon team, which won first place in the county this year, recalled how they learned from each other’s backgrounds.

Team member Kevin Chou, who is Chinese, recalled how a Latina team member offered welcome knowledge when the group studied subjects such as globalization and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In social studies classes, Alejandro Castro has shared personal stories about his great-grandfather, who was a follower of Pancho Villa, and about his father, who lived in Cuba under Communist rule. People of different races who have family and personal history to share make history more real, he said.

“If our history didn’t have that, then history would only be recorded from . . . the person who saw it and not from the person who was actually in it,” Alejandro said.

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Students who favor busing and ethnic mixing at the lower grades also say that approach helps prevent racism from escalating as it might otherwise in high school and beyond.

“It helps people to get along better,” said freshman Kirk Bermudez, who is Filipino. If you waited to mix students when they were in high school, he said, “they wouldn’t get along because they wouldn’t know what to do with [students of] other races.”

Senior Omar Magana, who is also Latino, agreed.

“I think if you grow up with just knowing a certain race,” he said, “you’re going to be totally adapted to that race and you won’t want to make friends with those of different races because you won’t know anything about their background.”

Integration, however, does not necessarily prevent racism, some students said. The way senior Miguel Villa sees it, putting students of different races together sometimes creates more opportunities for clashes.

He recalled an incident before the passage of Proposition 187, an initiative that cut government services to illegal immigrants. A group of white students held signs on campus in support of the measure.

Miguel and other Latino students asked them to put the signs down and held their own demonstration. A fight between a Latino and white student ensued, and he remembers being told by one white student, “Go back to Mexico.”

Yet Miguel agrees mixing students is helpful. “That gives you a chance for less racism to happen, because more people are going to know each other and there will be fewer problems,” he said.