Tuition-Free Primer

Teresa Schimmer first heard about the Fairmont Community Academy from a flier mailed to Anaheim residents early last fall.

Fairmont Private Schools was offering an unusual two-year pilot program: a tuition-free kindergarten and first-grade private education for children from low-income families.

Parents of Fairmont’s more than 2,200 students pay $6,000 a year to send their children to the school’s five campuses.

For Schimmer, a mother of two who doesn’t own a car and walks “if I don’t have the bus money,” the offer--with uniforms and hot lunches included--was too good to pass up.

“I thought it was a great opportunity,” said Schimmer, who pulled her 5-year-old daughter, Breanna, out of the year-round public kindergarten she had started a few months earlier and enrolled her in the academy.

Breanna is one of 19 students from low-income families who will complete kindergarten in June and begin first grade at the academy next fall.

This unusual scholarship program places underprivileged children in kindergarten and first grade at a private school campus, but in their own classes, not with Fairmont’s other students.

And its short-term nature--sending students back to public school for second grade--has some educators questioning its long-term helpfulness.

School officials said they placed the children separately because they had space at only one campus, which didn’t already have a kindergarten and first grade. And at least, they said, these students are getting a good start on their education. Many are now reading, a skill they are unlikely to lose.

Many private schools offer scholarships, but usually to individual students who attend the same classes as other students until graduation. Fairmont schools already offer financial aid to some students, though this is the first time the school has picked up the total tab for low-income students.

“This is a very unusual and very noteworthy type of thing they’re doing,” said Lois Gerber, chairwoman of the board of the National Independent Private Schools Assn.

The idea of the scholarship program originated with David Jackson, executive director and president of the nonsectarian, co-educational Fairmont Private Schools.

Jackson, a product of Anaheim public schools, said the academy is his way of giving back to the community and to prove that students from lower-income circumstances can succeed in the classroom.

Jackson’s Foundation for OC Private School Opportunities provided the funding for the two-year pilot program, which is intended to be the model for a possible charter school that would be managed by Fairmont Private Schools.

Originally housed in a donated classroom at the New Hope Christian Center in Anaheim, the academy moved into the former school library on Fairmont’s Mable Street campus in February after the church changed hands and the school lost its lease.

“I think as a group they’re doing extremely well,” said Liz Sanders, the academy’s kindergarten teacher. “I have kids who are just reading like crazy and I’d say overall they’re all very strong performers.”

Jackson is seeking outside money for a new kindergarten class in the fall and to expand the academy program to second and third grades.

But, he said, two years in the academy will give the students a good foundation for future classroom success.

“I think the biggest thing they’re going to take away is a higher level of self-esteem and a belief that they can work hard and learn at a much faster rate than all of their friends in their neighborhood,” he said. “And that translates into a great desire to work hard and having the study skills and study habits that will make a difference in the rest of their life.”

But some education experts, while praising Jackson’s intentions, say the benefits of the two-year academy may be short-lived.

That’s been proved with the federally funded Head Start program and other early intervention programs that were established in the 1960s, said Michael Martinez, an educational psychologist and associate professor of education at UC Irvine.

Researchers discovered that the children in these programs “acquired certain benefits pretty quickly,” he said. “The problem was if these programs terminated when the children were 5 or 6 years old, they found that within the next few years whatever intellectual gains were made by children during these high-intensity interventions were often lost. So, by say third grade or so, often there was no detectable lasting influence of the high-intensity intervention.”

Martinez said that Fairmont Community Academy is “a wonderful idea. But the thing people have to remember--and this is sort of a major point that is often overlooked in education--is that the quality of the child’s experience matters all the way through [school], and if you cut it short and they end up with some sort of mediocre experience--that’s going to have an effect.”

That’s not to say there might not be a “residual benefit” to the students’ academy experience, he said.

“The Fairmont Schools are right to start early. If there are long-lasting benefits it’s probably better to start earlier.”

Jackson said the academy was originally held off-site in a church classroom because he wanted to accommodate 24 students, Fairmont’s standard class size. No classroom space was available on any of the Fairmont campuses.

But now that the academy is held on a Fairmont campus, both Martinez and Gerber emphasized the importance of having the academy students mingle with the other students.

Angela Garcia said her granddaughter, Adriana, was warmly welcomed by other students and “is very happy she’s there.”

“She loves it,” Garcia said. “She loves the class. She loves the students, the school, her teachers. When she talks to her cousin, she keeps saying, ‘My school’s better.’ ”