Schools Fall Short of ’71 Integration Order : Oxnard: The racial mix eludes the elementary district because of the widening gap between the number of white and Latino students.

Elementary schools in Oxnard do not have enough white students to achieve the racial mix that was the goal of a court-ordered integration plan 20 years ago, Oxnard School District officials said.

Since the 1971 U.S. District Court ruling, which lapsed in 1987, the percentage of whites in the district has plunged from about 41% to 18.4%, while the percentage of Latinos has increased from 46% to 72.1%, Supt. Norman R. Brekke said. Asian-Americans, blacks and American Indians make up the rest of the district population.

“The problem I’m dealing with is we simply do not have enough whites to meaningfully integrate our classrooms,” Brekke said. “The reality of our numbers indicates to me that it is impossible any longer to have the kind of racial and ethnic balance we had in 1971. There are going to be classes that are 100% Hispanic. We have those classes this year.”

The percentage of white students in the 12,200-student, year-round district is decreasing by about 1% a year, while the percentage of Latinos is growing at about the same rate, Brekke said.

Brekke said he does not believe the declining number of white students is “white flight.”

“It’s probably more the increased birth rate in Hispanic families and immigration,” Brekke said. “Hispanic families are larger and increasing at a faster rate.”

On Tuesday, district trustees approved a report on Oxnard’s 2-year-old integration plan that has reduced many of the integration measures, including cross-town busing, adopted in 1971.

Board of Trustees President Charles R. Johnson said that because the district is predominantly Latino, the board should shift the focus of integration. Rather than looking at race alone, the district should consider whether students are new immigrants or longtime residents, he said.

“What they were after then and what we are seeking today are two different things,” Johnson said.

Under the 1971 court ruling, the Oxnard district was required to bus two-thirds of its students and to split students’ grammar school years between a nearby school and a school across town to achieve racial balance.

For example, three La Colonia elementary schools with primarily Latino populations--Rose Avenue, Juanita and Ramona--were paired with predominantly white schools in north Oxnard. Students would attend kindergarten through third grade at one school and fourth through sixth grades in another school.

The court also ordered that the enrollment of each school be within 15% of the proportion of Latinos in the entire district.

Under the current integration plan, each school must be within 20% of the proportion of Latinos in the district, so no school can be below 52.07% or above 92.07% Latino. About a third of the district’s students are bused, either for racial integration, or because they live farther than 1 1/2 miles from the nearest school, Brekke said.

Only six schools remain paired from the court-ordered system: Ramona and Sierra Linda; Juanita and Curren; and Harrington and Elm, according to the district report.

In some cases, white parents are putting their children in private schools rather than sending them to La Colonia schools, Brekke said. There are only 34 white students at Juanita, for example, a school in La Colonia that teaches kindergarten through third grade. But at Curren, which Juanita students attend from fourth through sixth grades, there are 108 white students.

Those parents may want their children in neighborhood schools, either public or private, but they may also want to avoid sending their children to La Colonia schools because of a perception among some parents that the neighborhood is dangerous, Brekke said.

District officials said they are also concerned that Juanita and McAuliffe do not fall within the current integration guidelines.

The Latino population at Juanita is 92.7%, the district report showed. Under the integration plan, the percentage of Latino students at any district school cannot be greater than 92.07%. At McAuliffe, the student body is 51.9% Latino, slightly below the lower limit of 52.07% for the number of Latino students at any school.

“No one is going to take us to court over that, but we have an obligation to draw attendance boundaries that will result in appropriate numerical counts,” Brekke said.

A boundary advisory committee of district administrators and parents began meeting weekly recently to come up with recommendations for each of the district’s 17 schools to ensure that the district continues to meet its integration goals, Brekke said.

The committee’s most immediate concern is McAuliffe, Brekke said. The school, which opened in 1988, is expected to be over its 1,050-student capacity by 200 students next fall, and officials must reassign those students to another school, he said.

“We’re going to try to choose an area that will enhance the remaining student count, and it’s going to be very difficult,” Brekke said. “It’s hard for parents to see the school is imbalanced when its 36.9% white.”

Final U.S. Census counts for the ethnic breakdown in Oxnard, including the percentage of Latinos, will not be available until late March or early April, but the figure could be as high as 54%, city officials said.

In 1980, the city was about 43% Latino, said Karl Lawson, who headed an Oxnard census project to count residents in low-income areas. The elementary schools were 65.6% Latino, school officials said.

One reason the percentage of Latinos in the schools is higher than in the city’s overall population is that large numbers of the recent Latino immigrants to Oxnard are 18 to 40 years old and have children in the schools, Lawson said.

RACIAL DISTRIBUTION IN OXNARD SCHOOLS

School Latino White Black Other Curren 83.1 11.0 4.5 1.4 Driffill 69.9 23.3 5.0 1.9 Elm 87.1 10.9 1.1 .9 Harrington 83.0 14.3 1.0 1.8 Juanita 92.7 4.5 1.9 .9 Kamala 78.6 10.3 9.1 1.9 Lemonwood 63.9 16.8 3.8 15.5 Marina West 52.4 34.4 9.5 3.6 McAuliffe 51.9 36.9 6.2 5.0 McKinna 76.7 11.4 7.5 4.4 Ramona 80.2 11.3 6.0 2.5 Rose Avenue 81.3 12.7 2.4 3.7 Sierra Linda 63.5 23.0 7.1 6.5 Fremont Intermediate 67.9 22.5 5.7 3.8 Haydock Intermediate 76.5 11.5 5.9 6.2 TOTAL 72.1 18.4 5.3 4.2

* Figures do not include special education students