Collegiate View : Valley’s First Charter Middle School Opens on CSUN Campus

Walking to class Tuesday morning, Vanessa Valdivia smiled at the big people and felt more like an adult than an 11-year-old girl in a navy school uniform.

On her way to the first day of sixth grade at Cal State Northridge, Vanessa imagined herself taller, wiser and studying to become a doctor.

“All these pretty buildings . . . it’s pretty exciting,” Vanessa said as she also watched the college students. “They’re so big, but if I study very hard, I could go here.”

After several failed attempts to secure a school site, the San Fernando Valley’s first charter middle school opened Tuesday on the first floor of CSUN’s College of Education. The school opened with 100 sixth-graders, many of whom said they dream one day of going to a university.

Although the site is temporary, school officials said they hope the collegiate setting will create a lasting impression.

“Only you can dream of college,” said Jackie Elliot, the school’s founder and principal during the school’s opening ceremony at CSUN’s Student Center. “Boys and girls, I had a dream that I could start a charter school and today my dream has come true.”

Surrounded by blue-and-white balloons, as well as administrators, teachers, parents and the students, Elliot said her dream took years to accomplish. “I did it,” she told the students, “and so can you.”

Following the ceremony, the school’s staff members guided students--walking with straight backs and heads held high--to their classrooms across campus.

After renovations and bureaucratic tasks are completed in about a month, the charter school will move to its permanent site, a former preschool with 6,000 square feet, ample outdoor space and a multipurpose room at 1441 Celis St. in San Fernando.

By 2001, the school is expected to enroll 300 sixth- through eighth-graders.

In exchange for pledges of higher student achievement, charter schools operate outside most state and school district guidelines and control finances and curriculum.

For nearly three years, Elliot, a former Los Angeles teacher, administrator and health educator, has secured state and private grants and developed plans for the school.

Those plans call for integrating reading and writing skills into science and social studies classes, and working with CSUN in identifying students who may have difficulties on standardized tests.

Drawing upon a number of studies on the needs of middle school students, Elliot said the school’s staff members will nurture the preteens and try to instill the self-worth needed to be successful in high school and college and help them avoid such dangers as drugs, gangs and sexual promiscuity.

Parent Maya Sample called the charter school--one of a handful within the Los Angeles Unified School District--”a breakthrough in education” because it offers the individualized attention often found in private schools.

“The transition to middle school can be a little traumatic,” Sample said.

Before starting classes Tuesday, Mario Maeda, 11, acknowledged feeling nervous about starting school among “the big kids.”

“Yeah, they’re big,” Mario said. “But it’s nice. I want to be a lawyer and save people who are innocent from being [found] guilty. It’s a nice choice. College will help me.”