Who’s Smart Now?

In some respects, Hillview is a public high school to die for.

Each class has only 15 students, the computer lab has the latest hardware and teachers design individual lesson plans tailored to their charges. The students get along pretty well and the attendance clerk, who knows every student by name, resolves apparent truancies on the spot.

Yet Hillview and other continuation schools like it have been the source of smirks and sneers, referred to as schools for losers, filled with troublemakers and others who could not cut the competitive academics of “real” high schools.

Principal Al Marzilli hopes that attitude will change now that Hillview has been named a 1998 California Continuation Model School by the state’s Department of Education, one of only 12 such schools so honored.

It took some doing to get to this point.

“We just push our kids all the time--image, image, image,” said Marzilli, a former assistant principal and coach who started at Hillview two years ago. “I tell them it’s image for them, image for us, image for their peers. It used to be the image that continuation schools were for bad kids. You used to hear these kids can’t do things. They can do things; you just need high expectations.”

The primary goal here is to help kids who might slip through the academic cracks build self-confidence, finish up their credits and find a focus for their lives.

Teachers and staff regularly refer to the school as a “family,” a concept that may have been skewed for many of the students.

“We are a ‘mom’ to them,” school secretary Carla Schwer said. “A lot of them don’t even know manners, and we teach them that too.”

Some students grew up in poverty and others leave million-dollar homes to drive to the campus in this unincorporated area near Tustin. Some have been to Juvenile Hall, some have undiagnosed learning disabilities and some have simply fallen behind because of illness, boredom or too much moving around and too many new schools. The only common denominator is that they do not fit into the traditional schools of Tustin Unified School District.

With only 165 enrolled, the school accepts each student as is. Quirks and idiosyncrasies are not only tolerated but celebrated. Conformity is not a value here.

Melissa Schroeder, a 17-year-old who ran away from home last year and missed an entire semester, visited every continuation school in the county before deciding on Hillview.

“It’s just so different from the other schools,” she said. “Everybody is pretty laid-back. Tolerant. Maybe it’s just because they know what it is to be different.”

Marzilli, who has worked in traditional schools in Tustin Unified for nearly 30 years, sounds like a proud father when describing the misfit personalities of his students.

“They don’t walk in lock-step with the other kids,” he said. “They’re very right-brained, very holistic, not logical in steps and like to do things on their own.”

Students and teachers alike confess that they felt panic-stricken when they approached the school office that first day.

“I was terrified,” said Erin Tackett, a 16-year-old who was expelled from nearby Foothill High for truancy. “Everyone thought it was a school for druggies and gangs. . . . It’s really just geared toward people who are more independent.”

Tackett and some other students acknowledged that they sometimes can be too independent, but the small classes and unrelenting supervision keep them from going too far.

“I’m not just another face here,” she said. “I wouldn’t be going anywhere if I weren’t at this school. Half the kids here would be on the street. . . . I’m going to college for sure.”

Students and their parents sign contracts with the school, stipulating their goals and agreeing to the rules. Swearing, for instance, will merit an immediate suspension in a school that emphasizes the social graces.

Classes are taught seven periods a day, two more than traditional schools, and the school year is divided into quarters, which means students can earn credits faster and catch up with their peers.

Teaching methods vary according to the student. Some do better with the traditional continuation philosophy of working independently. Others are engaged by the less traditional classes, which take advantage of their verbal skills.

Reading can often be a problem for students who have fallen behind, especially among those who have grown up in Spanish-speaking homes, instructors said.

English teacher Judy Watts feared her class might be intimidated when faced with a copy of “To Kill A Mockingbird.” So she gave students copies of the play and had them read the parts aloud. They jumped right in.

“These kids are very creative, very verbal,” she said. “They rise to the challenge and it’s very rewarding.”

Molly Baross, who also teaches reading, ordered tapes of “The Diary of Anne Frank” because she knew a tedious word-by-word approach to the story would be too frustrating. While students may miss some of the words as they read along, she said, they will at least have read the book.

Then again, she can’t rely on that technique working next year.

“It’s mentally very hard,” Baross said of working with such a diverse student body. “You have to evaluate every class, every day, every year. Things I did the first year won’t work the second or third year.”

Along with smaller classes come fewer resources.

Marzilli has no assistant principal; there are eight teachers, a part-time counselor (“She’s paid to be part-time anyway,” he adds), a school secretary and an attendance clerk. But the district gave him tremendous support and a site grant of $25,000 for him to make his mark.

Soon after he started, it was time to renew the school’s accreditation from the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges.

Math and science teacher Barry Turner helped with the evaluation and said it was a turning point in the school’s history.

“The process forced us to look at our school very honestly,” he said.

The staff members took surveys and realized they needed to help seniors learn more about career prospects and educational possibilities. They solicited local companies and service clubs to donate computers and come describe their work to students. They put more emphasis on individual teaching plans.

In the end, the school received a six-year accreditation, the highest offered.

Turner gives much of the credit to the indefatigable Marzilli. “You hear the term ‘go-getter,’ ” he said. “That’s him.”

And Turner said he can envy the kids their unconventional attitude toward life, which may not serve them well in high school but has vast potential for the future. “I won’t take a risk in life--that’s me,” he said. “But these kids might.”

Many of the students are gifted in the fine arts and plan to be painters, writers or rappers. Others said they have the confidence now to reach for a profession.

Art Salas, a 17-year-old senior from Santa Ana, said that while he once was on a path leading to a life on probation, he now wants to be a probation officer.

“I was going the wrong way, listening to the wrong people,” said Salas, who anticipates graduating. “I’d probably be in prison or somewhere by now. . . . Teachers here told me to come in on my own time for extra help. No teacher ever did that for me before.”

There are also the “heartbreakers,” as Schwer describes them. Sometimes the motivation is so low, the confidence so beaten down, a teenager can’t be saved.

“You give them enough strokes and eventually you hit the right button,” Marzilli said. “Some kids it turns around, some it doesn’t.”