New Prep School Pledges Diversity

On that first day in September, as her mother’s beat-up station wagon wound its way out of her working-class Santa Ana neighborhood and up to the ocean bluffs and the bright clean air of Newport Beach, 14-year-old Beatriz Arreola felt the fear in the pit of her stomach.

“What if I don’t fit in?” she asked herself. “What if they don’t like me?”

It was a risk the shy girl was willing to take, because the brand new Sage Hill School had offered her something the straight-A student felt she couldn’t get at home: a rigorous, $14,000-a-year education, for free.

In exchange, Beatriz is giving the county’s first nonprofit, nondenominational private high school something it desperately craves: diversity.

The impact of Orange County’s newest prep school, which is nearing the end of its first academic year, has been felt well beyond its hillside campus. The school is not only creating diversity, but demanding tolerance and understanding from its students through a series of in-your-face exercises, and requiring commitment to community service and the arts.

Applications are up and millions of dollars have poured into Sage Hill for new buildings and scholarships.

That boon, however, may mean less money for the foundations at nearby public schools that have lost well-heeled families to the new campus.

Donations to Corona del Mar High’s fund-raising foundation may be down as much as 10% this year, said board member John Packer, in large part because of Sage Hill. Packer has been examining Sage Hill’s class sizes and high-tech offerings to see if his public school can emulate its success. He estimated that Corona has lost about 5% of its students to the private school.

Community organizations and national institutions--from One Hundred Black Men to the Smithsonian--are working with the school. And such elite private universities as Stanford and Harvard, which Sage Hill has assiduously courted, have come calling.

All the attention going to Sage Hill makes some public school parents resentful.

“It makes me a little crazy,” said Karen Wight, a parent who is active in Newport Harbor High’s foundation. “If they put that kind of money into Harbor High, . . . it could be so fabulous.”

In addition, some educators noted that Sage Hill may drain the best and brightest minority students out of their home districts, along with some of their most inspiring teachers.

Founder Dori Caillouette makes no apologies for creating a well-funded private school that will serve only a fraction of Orange County’s needy students.

“A lot of people said to me, ‘Don’t you feel guilty putting all these resources into only a small group of students when there’s all these kids in public schools?’ ” the Newport Beach resident said.

Her answer: “Every one of the students at Sage Hill is going to be affected for life.” In the long run, she believes that will have a much greater impact than putting the same amount of money into public schools.

But more, Caillouette is hoping that Sage Hill will be a model for the rest of the county, and show how rigorous education can go hand in hand with diversity and a close-knit campus community.

“We wanted to raise the bar for the entire community,” said Caillouette. “We believe education is the great equalizer.”

Sage Hill began in 1995 during a casual conversation among Caillouette, her husband, Jamie, an orthopedic surgeon, and other parents. They wanted a prep school for their children, one that had the best the New England schools could offer. But they also envisioned a campus that embodied Orange County’s spirit of innovation and California’s diversity. Shakespeare and Alexis de Tocqueville would be there, of course, but there would also be dancing and jazz, computer graphics and volunteer work.

From the first, the Caillouettes’ vision captivated movers and shakers around the county, as well as other parents yearning for the same thing. Technology giants such as former America Online executive Steve Johnson gave more than $1 million. Jack Peltason, president emeritus of UC Irvine, jumped onto the board of directors, somewhat to his own surprise, he said, because he never thought he would be associated with a private academy.

Three years ago, the Caillouettes’ dream took on the urgency of a mission. Their oldest son, Britton, was diagnosed as having a rare form of bone cancer. Determined to keep him from losing his leg, they flew him to Seattle for experimental bone graft surgery, which initially was successful. The family returned all the more determined to make the school a reality.

“It helps us not get depressed at night,” Caillouette said. “Knowing that we’re touching kids with the school we have founded.”

Britton was voted student body president this year.

The campus has intimate classrooms, designed to snugly accommodate a small number of students. A fireplace and easy chairs grace the library, along with a gallery for student artwork, complete with spotlights. Rose potpourri sits in a little dish in the office bathroom.

But students spend at least seven school days each year outside their ivory tower doing volunteer work.

With such amenities, it was easy enough to find children whose parents could afford the $14,000 tuition. The school started this year with about 120 students. Next year, it will grow to 250, and already more than 600 children have requested applications for 130 open spots.

School officials also fanned out across the county to find high achieving poor and minority students and lure them up to Newport Beach. This year, 18% of students receive some financial aid. Officials hope that number will be higher in years to come.

Beatriz was one of those recruited students, and when her mother heard about Sage Hill, she was apprehensive. Would her daughter be treated badly by the other students? Would she grow ashamed of her family’s aging car, their humble circumstances?

Coincidentally, the same plot had played out a few weeks earlier on a Spanish-language soap opera, and the poor girl attending the rich school had shunned her parents, forcing them to drop her off blocks from the school so no one would see their car.

“I told her, ‘I don’t want you pretending you are rich,”’ Arreola said. “ ‘You are not rich.’ ”

But on the other hand, Arreola believes in pushing her children to do their best and take chances. Sage Hill was offering her daughter, who dreams of becoming a Harvard-educated doctor, amenities unavailable at Valley High School in Santa Ana.

So Arreola rearranged her life to make the 25-mile trip to the school, twice a day. Even if she loses her job because she repeatedly gets caught in traffic, she said, it will be worth it. And on the first day, Beatriz put on her best new outfit--bought with her mother’s employee discount at Nordstrom-- and bravely got out of the car.

That first week, officials made good on their promise to actively promote diversity, rather than just throwing everyone together and letting stereotypes and bad feelings fester.

All the students, teachers and staff lined up on the football field to literally act out their differences.

Black students and teachers were told to take one step back, because they have historically occupied a subservient role in U.S. society.

White male students and teachers were told to surge to the front of the field, thanks to the advantages society has traditionally conferred upon them.

Students and teachers had the option of not stepping forward or back if they did not want to.

The exercise went through what Academic Dean Liz Resnick calls “the Big Eight” sources of discrimination: race, religion, gender, class, age, physical ability, sexual orientation and national origin. After the exercise, students and teachers talked about it for more than two hours.

The idea was to force students to confront their stereotypes. Only by doing that, school officials believed, would students and teachers be able to overcome their differences and create a community.

For one family, all this was a bit too much diversity. When they came to the office to complain, officials said they listened and then politely told them that perhaps Sage Hill wasn’t the place for them. The family withdrew their child.

“We stand up for what we believe,” said head of school Clint Wilkins.

But the Caillouettes’ triumph turned to despair earlier this spring, after their son suffered a relapse. This time, he lost his leg.

When Britton returned to class, he found out students had collected money to buy him a drum set to encourage him to keep playing music.

Beatriz, too, has found a supportive community at Sage Hill--teachers who give her extra help, friends who invite her over when her mother can’t pick her up. It has more than made up for the sacrifices of making a new start in unfamiliar surroundings. Because of transportation problems, she missed too many ballet classes to participate in her Santa Ana studio’s spring concert, a heavy disappointment. And despite doing extra work last summer, she struggled in biology this year.

“I feel like I’m learning a lot more than at any school I’ve ever been to, . . . and everyone treats you the same. They don’t care how you look, they care about how you are,” she said. “It’s a better place to be.”