Board to Vote on Lottery for Schools

Santa Ana school board members tonight will decide whether to abandon the annual rite of parent camp-outs to register their children for magnet schools and replace it with a lottery system.

The camp-outs, in which hundreds of parents sleep in tents outside school grounds for up to a week waiting to enroll their children, may violate state laws that require random admissions, said Sal Tinejero, the school board member who proposed the change.

And they are certainly unfair to working parents who cannot afford to take a week off to live in line, he said.

But many parents at the district’s six fundamental schools are outraged at the proposal. They say the camp-outs are integral to guaranteeing an excellent education at the campuses.

The highly desired schools boast a back-to-basics curriculum and stricter discipline and have higher test scores than the district’s other campuses.

But the real secret to their success is the parental commitment to education fostered by nights spent shivering in the cold outside the front doors, said Richard Montecino, president of the Parent Faculty Assn. at Greenville Fundamental School.

What’s more, moving to a lottery system will take away parents’ choices of where their children attend school, he said.

“I think a lottery will mean a lot of changes for the fundamental school,” said Virginia Snow, whose children attend two fundamental schools. Snow opposes the change.

But Tinejero said the district must comply with state laws, though board members are committed to continuing the extraordinary parental involvement at the fundamental schools.

The new proposal calls for parents who want to enter the lottery to attend at least three classes to learn about the schools and how to help their children succeed.

“We will be using our time more wisely,” Tinejero said. Instead of wasting parents’ time in frustrating and potentially dangerous urban camping adventures, the district will teach them how to be better parents, he said.

“The lines have gotten out of control,” Tinejero said. The new rules would not take effect until fall 2003. And children already in the school and their siblings would be able to stay. If board members approve the change tonight, they would have to vote on it one more time to finalize it.