Parents’ Annual Camp-Out Gives Kids a Chance to Enroll

Pedro Lozano, also known as No. 3, grabbed his clipboard Tuesday and, from the shade of a jacaranda tree, began calling roll.

Already, 84 families had arrived with tents and lawn chairs, blankets and umbrellas and a week’s worth of food to camp outside the prestigious MacArthur Fundamental Intermediate School until Saturday. Their goal: to secure spots for their children in the Santa Ana Unified School District’s only fundamental intermediate school.

Campers know the rules they created. Miss three roll calls and you lose your spot.

The annual camp-out to enroll children at MacArthur began several years ago. But as interest in fundamental schools has grown, so has the line here.

“It started with one night, then it became two,” said No. 52, Marisela Gomez. “Now it’s almost a week.”

Fundamental schools, begun about two decades ago, stress back-to-basics and English-only instruction, strict discipline and parental involvement. The programs have gained popularity in Southern California, because students tend to outscore their peers at neighborhood schools. Fundamental schools have variously used lotteries or first-come, first-served systems, leaving many parents on waiting lists for next time.

On Jan. 5, more than 200 parents camped outside the Pasadena Unified School District’s headquarters hoping to secure one of 130 spaces at the Don Benito fundamental school.

Last year, the Simi Valley Unified School District launched two fundamental schools at Hollow Hills and Vista elementary schools and held a lottery to determine who would attend.

The schools have no neighborhood boundaries. Parents with winning numbers or early spots in line get in. Siblings of current students, though, are given priority.

At MacArthur, several parents in line, including Lozano, 43, and Bill Rojas, 31, took vacations from their jobs this week to join the annual event. Others who could not get time off work had friends and relatives sitting in for them during the day.

“We’ve been planning this for a very long time,” Rojas said. “We want our daughter to go to this school, and if this is what we have to do, we’re going to do it.”

Officials at MacArthur would not say how many openings exist for the children of this week’s campers.

Some of the campers who live nearby criticized the district’s open enrollment policy for fundamental schools and said they resented having to camp out. They argued that their children should be able to attend MacArthur automatically, because it is the neighborhood school.

But Santa Ana schools Supt. Al Mijares said the system was designed by parents who believed it would draw those most willing to be active in the school.

“They felt that it was important that parents be serious participants in the school, and that they needed to make the commitment,” he said.

Administrators estimate that 80% of MacArthur’s 1,200 students live within two miles of the school.

The logic was lost on many parents such as Gomez, 39, a neighborhood resident who by Tuesday already had tired of sleeping on the ground.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “I don’t drive. How am I going to get my son to school if he doesn’t get in here? The district should start to respect the neighborhoods.”