An ‘A’ for Efforts

It has been a good year at Santa Paula High School.

Following a summer marked by heated debate over how best to reverse the school’s reputation as one of the poorest performers in the county, the campus has strung together an impressive list of accomplishments over the past nine months.

A controversial move to eliminate lower-level classes and funnel hundreds of students into college prep courses has paid dividends, with the vast majority of youngsters able to keep pace with the more rigorous curriculum, officials say.

The school also launched an innovative magnet program in agriculture and science, enrolling the first 30 freshmen in a four-year curriculum aimed at earning them admission to the state’s top university agriculture programs.

The high school even produced a National Merit Scholar this year, a 16-year-old science whiz and taekwondo black belt named Kathleen Nava, who is headed to Johns Hopkins University next year.

Taken together, the accomplishments reflect a historic shift in attitude at the 1,500-student campus, a new way of thinking about learning and academic expectations. Although definitive results are not yet in, the program is winning national attention, including an upcoming story in Time magazine.

“We were tired of being at the bottom,” said Principal Tony Gaitan, strolling the bucolic turn-of-the-century campus last week.

“We set out to change the perspective on our campus, to be committed to our students and their academic success,” he said. “You can talk and talk about these things for years, but you’ll find that you won’t have any change. We just went ahead and did it, and it has taken off.”

Raising the Standards

At the heart of the changes was a simple idea that the students could do better, that they could hurdle the academic bar even as it was being raised.

There was a feeling that all students needed a more rigorous curriculum, from those excelling in their studies to those struggling just to stay afloat.

“The goal that we set was to increase academic excellence across the board,” said school board member Terry Nelson, a 1969 graduate of Santa Paula High whose children also are products of the campus. “We felt that in the past, not enough was happening to challenge our students, to give them a good solid academic background to go on to college or to be able to go into any profession.”

School district officials started laying the groundwork years ago, recruiting teachers and switching to a block schedule that allows students to concentrate on three 90-minute classes per semester.

But by far the biggest changes came this year.

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After much debate, the district eliminated the so-called standard track in the core subjects of mathematics, English, social science and science, instead funneling about 600 students into college prep classes.

The standard track was academically unchallenging, officials said, offering a curriculum that satisfied graduation requirements but failed to prepare students for college or work.

Despite the tougher curriculum and early fears that many students would wash out, district officials say that nearly 50% of the student body is maintaining at least a B average, while nearly 80% have a C average or better--about the same performance as the year before.

For students having trouble making the grade, the school instituted an after-school tutorial program and a Saturday school program.

And for those at the upper end, the district eliminated 11th- and 12th-grade honors classes, replacing them with advanced-placement courses in history, government, economics, calculus, biology and Spanish.

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That change was meant to allow Santa Paula students to use the advanced-placement test, given at the end of the year for college credit, to measure themselves against the best and brightest students in the nation.

“We found that our kids were very durable and could do tremendous things if we just encouraged them and provided them support,” said William Brand, superintendent of the Santa Paula Union High School District. “We want to be competitive in this county and that’s a very high standard.”

Also this year, the high school launched a magnet program allowing students countywide to participate in a one-of-a-kind curriculum designed to prepare students for the state’s best university agriculture programs.

The program provides specialized course work in agriculture and science, and provides field experience through partnerships formed with 60 agribusiness and farm-related operations.

The first 30 students were accepted into the program this year. By the time they are juniors they will hold internships with local businesses. And when they are seniors, the students will actually hold down part-time jobs in the agriculture industry that will help them pay for college.

Participants who stay the course and maintain at least a B average will receive preferential admission into some of the state’s top agricultural universities, including UC Davis and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

“Our goal here is to get these students preferential enrollment into these major universities . . . so they will be treated like star athletes when it’s time for them to go to college,” said science teacher Ray Sepulveda, director of the program. “Then we’d like to see them come back to our community as high-tech professionals and really set the world on fire.”

An Affinity of Place

Senior Kathleen Nava wishes those opportunities had been available when she began at the school. But then again, she did all right without them.

The straight-A student has racked up a host of awards and scholarships, including being named a National Merit Scholar.

She already had won a one-time $16,000 scholarship from Johns Hopkins University, where she plans to study medicine and biomedical engineering. The merit scholarship gives her an additional $2,000 a year over the next four years.

The 1998 competition for merit scholarships began with more than a million juniors in 20,000 high schools taking national exams. That number was whittled down to 7,400 high school seniors who won scholarships totaling $28 million.

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“She has worked very hard, put in long hours, and now she’s starting to realize the fruits of her hard work,” said her father, Armando Nava. “She has always tried to do her best. Not just good enough to get an A, but her very best.”

With less than two weeks to go until graduation, Kathleen is bracing for the transition. She is excited about starting a life away from home. But she knows in just a few days, everything will be different.

“It’s a real big step for me,” she said. “I’m really excited about getting the chance to follow my dream. But I’m really going to miss it here.”

In the end, it is exactly that kind of small-town sentiment that motivates teachers and administrators to do better, many say.

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Generations of families have passed through Santa Paula High. It is the kind of place where students graduate, go away to college and return as teachers.

“I think the biggest difference between when I graduated and now is you see that people are willing to change,” said Santa Paula native Lisa Salas, a 1986 graduate who now serves as the school’s activities director in addition to working with youngsters who are falling short of meeting the new standards.

“It’s a step-by-step process, and it’s going to take a while,” she said. “But I think there’s a feeling throughout the whole town that it was time to do something different.”