Schools Expect Record Enrollment

By ANNA GORMAN

Aug. 27, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ventura County schools expect a record number of students--138,000--this year, about 3,600 more than the previous school year, officials said.

The growth has forced districts to hire hundreds of new teachers, install several portable classrooms and build a few new schools.

This week marks the start of school at 12 of the county’s 20 districts, the first time so many schools have opened their doors before Labor Day.

District officials say classes are starting earlier this year to ensure enough time for the required 180 student days and additional teacher-training days before school lets out in mid-June.

“It’s a calendar of convenience,” said Jerry Dannenberg, assistant superintendent for Ventura Unified. “It gets our schools out on time so we can start summer school in a timely fashion.”

Dannenberg said he has fielded calls from frustrated parents who wanted those last few days of summer vacation.

“No matter when we start, we get complaints. There is no perfect calendar,” Dannenberg said.

To handle the additional student load, school officials have hired 63 teachers in the Oxnard Union High School District, 85 in Simi Unified, 88 in Ventura Unified and 100 in Conejo Valley Unified. Fillmore hired about 20 and Moorpark hired 25.

A new elementary campus in Oxnard opened earlier this month, and another opens in El Rio in September. A technology magnet high school is also opening in Ventura this week, though the students will attend classes in temporary buildings until spring.

With only a few days left before the first day of the 2000-01 school year, teachers are decorating their classrooms, parents are shopping for school supplies and students are enjoying their last nights without homework.

Meanwhile, administrators are gearing up for a long year of renovating campuses, testing students and training teachers. But school officials say this year they are finally taking a deep breath, after what one called a “tidal wave” of reforms.

“We were in the ready, fire, aim sequence,” said Robert Fraisse, superintendent of the Hueneme Elementary School District. “But they took away the ready and they took away the aim, and we were just firing, firing, firing. Now we feel like we have the time to do it right.”

In recent years, teachers and principals have had to implement numerous new programs, including class-size reduction, the end of social promotion (passing students despite poor performance) and several school safety initiatives. And they have administered three years of the Stanford 9 achievement test, the results of which are now being used to rank schools across the state.

Superintendents say this year they can finally concentrate on fine-tuning the various academic programs. Their priorities are improving students’ achievement, aligning the curriculum to new state standards, raising standardized test scores and reaching targets on the Academic Performance Index, the state’s school-ranking system.

The state Department of Education published the first API rankings in January, and will release the second round next month. Campuses that meet their growth targets will be eligible for financial rewards, while schools that don’t will eventually be subject to penalties.

“Meeting our API target is the top priority,” said Bill Studt, superintendent of the Oxnard Union High School District. “Everybody has the hammer on their heads to make that increment.”

Toward that end, districts are emphasizing teacher-training and mentoring programs. Teachers from throughout the county have attended summer workshops on better ways to teach reading, math and English, as well as how to integrate technology into the curriculum. Schools will also continue to offer before- and after-school programs for low-performing students in an effort to boost their test scores.

Gov. Gray Davis set aside billions of dollars in the budget toward education this year, with the goals to improve technology, teach immigrant children English and reward staff members at schools where standardized test scores improve. Davis also set aside $1.84 billion in unrestricted funds, nearly $40 million of which is earmarked for Ventura County.

The bulk of that money will go toward raising teachers’ pay, administrators say, but school officials also hope to hire more nurses and counselors and restore art and music programs.

Conejo Unified has already brought on deans at the middle schools and hired more elementary school counselors.

“The vast majority will be saved for teacher salaries, but we also felt this need to share this largess with the students,” Conejo Supt. Jerry Gross said.

While administrators prepped their teachers for the new school year, students picked out school clothes and attended orientations.

At the Straight A’s school uniform shop in Oxnard, owner Helena Machlin said this time of the year is her Christmas season.

On a recent afternoon, family after family visited the shop looking for uniforms. Sarah Mendez, 11, who attends E.O. Green School in Oxnard, flipped through rows of blue and white sweaters, skirts, shirts and pants.

When Sarah came out of the dressing room wearing a pair of navy bell bottoms, her mother Melissa said, “Look at those. How cute!”

Sarah rolled her eyes and said, “Mother. I’m not going to be Elvis.”

Across the county at Los Cerritos Middle School in Thousand Oaks, students tried out their lockers, received their gym clothes and searched for their classes.

With his dad looking over his shoulder, Kyle Foerster, 12, tried to get his lock to budge. After several attempts, he finally got the lock to click open. But he still wasn’t confident--about the locker or on starting seventh grade. “I’m nervous about forgetting my combination,” he said. “All of it’s kind of scary.”

Meanwhile, 12-year-old Erin Moore wandered through the halls with her mother and younger brother, trying to locate each of her classes. “This is like a maze in here,” she said.

Steps away, middle school teacher Lori Cord carefully unpacked her classroom, tacking up posters that read, “Any way you add it up, math counts” and “I don’t give grades--you earn them.”

Cord, who has been teaching for seven years, said she usually feels just as nervous as her students on the first day of school.

“I get the jitters every year,” she said.

Cord said she knows it’s only a few days until she has the annual anxiety dream, when she walks into the classroom on the first day of school and realizes she forgot to write a lesson plan.

And as teachers finished setting up their rooms late last week, construction workers scrambled to finish the bulk of modernization projects. Around the county, districts are spending state and local bond money on renovating their schools, replacing roofs and restrooms and installing portable classrooms.

Voters in the Santa Paula Elementary and Hueneme Elementary districts passed multimillion-dollar bonds last school year to fund campus renovations.

And if state Proposition 39 passes, reducing the requirement for local bond passage from a two-thirds majority to 55%, more local districts could be expected to try and get their own funding measures passed next year.

That could help Fillmore Unified, where voters twice rejected a bond that would have funded construction of an elementary school.

“We are just completely at capacity in most of our districts,” county schools Supt. Chuck Weis said. “The bond initiative could help us fill this housing shortage that we are going to experience in the coming years and that we already face in Oxnard.”

In several districts, construction will continue through the school year.

The Oxnard Union High School District is planning to open a high school in 2001, and Oxnard Elementary hopes to open two additional schools.

Administrators know the constant hammering, drilling and sawing present challenges for teachers, but say they don’t have much choice.

“It’s like conducting a wedding in your house when you have no kitchen,” Fraisse said. “It’s difficult.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SCHOOL DISTRICT START DATE

Briggs Elementary: Sept. 5

Conejo Valley Unified: Aug. 30

Fillmore Unified: Aug. 14

Hueneme Elementary: Aug. 30

Mesa Union: Aug. 28

Moorpark Unified: Aug. 30