New Day on Campus : Uniforms, Bus Fees Just Some of the Changes Facing Students

By TRACY WILSON

Sept. 6, 1994 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Five-year-old Nichelle O’Brien glanced quizzically at her new plaid jumper as her mother pulled the stiff blue and gray uniform over her kindergartner-size frame.

“It’s a little long,” she said. “But I have to grow into it.”

Nichelle and her 625 schoolmates at Garden Grove School in Simi Valley will adjust to the fit of new uniforms this school year as their elementary campus launches a voluntary uniform policy.

Garden Grove is the only school in Ventura County taking advantage of a new state law allowing uniforms in public schools, but it’s not the only campus that will confront dramatic changes as the new school year begins this week.

Besides the uniforms at Garden Grove, Simi Valley schools face another first: Parents will be required to pay for school busing--a charge the district was forced to impose to make up a financial shortfall.

In the neighboring Conejo Valley Unified School District, special-education students at two schools will share classes with mainstream students for the first time.

Some Thousand Oaks sixth-graders will enter middle school classrooms Thursday for the first time since Colina Middle School--formerly Colina Intermediate--adopted a reconfiguration plan for grades six, seven and eight in the spring.

And in Moorpark, hundreds of students will attend classes at the new Mesa Verde Middle School campus, which will help relieve overcrowding at Chaparral Middle School.

“I think change is accelerating in our schools,” Ventura County Supt. of Schools Charles Weis said. “People are trying to get our schools ready for the 21st Century.”

One of the most visual changes in the county will be apparent Thursday, when the majority of Garden Grove School students arrive for the first day of school in blue pants or skirts and white tops embossed with the school logo.

Although other Ventura County schools have established strict dress codes forbidding baggy, oversized clothing, Garden Grove is the first school to establish a uniform policy.

School officials hope the common attire will allow students to focus more on academics and less on fashion.

“Children want to have uniforms on,” Principal Elroy Peterson said. “They want to identify what school they go to and show pride in the way they look.”

Parents were able to buy the uniforms, which include shorts, culottes, sweaters and knit shirts, at Target and JCPenny, but also at the school, where a uniform supply company held three summer sales.

Waiting on campus for her mother to buy her new blue and white outfits last week, 7-year-old Jessica Moss said now she won’t fight with her mother over what to wear to school every day.

“I want to wear a uniform because before I would say, ‘I want to wear these clothes,’ and then I’d say, ‘No, I want to wear these clothes,’ ” the second-grader said.

Jessica’s mother, Joan Moss, is equally relieved.

“It is pretty easy, you either wear the pants or the skirt,” she said. “I think most parents think it is a good idea.”

Moss said the uniforms are also cheaper than buying new school clothes.

“I usually spend $300 to $350,” she said. “This year I spent about $150 so the cost is less.”

Prices for Garden Grove’s uniforms range from $33 for a girls’ plaid jumper to $12 for a knit-collared shirt. Boys’ twill pants cost between $16.50 to $22.50, depending on size, and girls’ and boys’ shorts vary in price from $15.50 to $20.50.

About 95% of the school’s parents have already bought uniforms for the start of the school year, Vice Principal Judy Cannings said.

Students who do not wear uniforms are required to adhere to the school’s dress code, which states that students must wear collared or crew-necked shirts tucked in at the waist, and properly fitting pants or shorts.

The dress code also prohibits hats, tank tops, sweat pants and disruptive hairstyles.

While some parents have complained that Garden Grove’s dress code is as restrictive as the uniform policy, the school’s tough rules were supported recently by a new state law permitting school districts to require students to wear uniforms. The law, which Gov. Pete Wilson signed last month, takes effect Jan. 1.

“I think our society is changing, and that is one of the changes for the better,” Cannings said, adding that other Ventura County schools may decide to follow Garden Grove’s lead.

“I certainly think other schools in Ventura County are looking at us,” she said. “I don’t know if we are part of a trend, but we are being watched.”

Supt. Joseph Spirito of the Ventura Unified School District has instructed his 25 principals to form task forces to investigate whether families would welcome dress codes.

Another change in the Simi Valley Unified School District stirring debate is the district’s new policy on bus transportation.

Faced with cutting $2.5 million to balance the district’s $77.1-million budget, the school board decided earlier this year to adopt a “transportation user’s fee” beginning with the 1994-95 school year. Conejo Valley Unified, the only other Ventura County school district to charge for school busing, began imposing fees two years ago.

Starting Thursday, Simi Valley students must present a credit card-sized plastic pass to ride the bus to school. The passes cost $300 a year or $150 a semester.

The new policy has not been well received, district officials said. Based on the number of bus passes sold, transportation director Frank Smith said school ridership is down about 75%.

“I have talked to many districts (that charge for busing); it usually starts out low and increases,” Smith said. “I think most people when you have to put additional money out of your pocket are going to be upset.”

Simi Valley parent Stella Kenton, who refused to pay for school busing, said her daughter will walk home from Berylwood School this year--a two-mile hike for the fourth-grader.

“I think that a lot of people are going to let their kids walk just as we are doing,” she said.

City officials said they intend to study whether more students walk than take a bus because of the fees, and whether more crossing guards might be needed. But they said they have no immediate plans to increase the number of crossing guards. The city now has 22 guards.

“We just got a request this week from the school district for six new guards,” said Diane Jones, the city’s environmental services director. “But what is important for people to realize is that we don’t have any history at this point. Once school has started, we have to wait for patterns to develop.”

Jones said the city’s study will probably begin in October.

In the meantime, Stella Kenton worries that her daughter and other children who walk to and from school will be endangered as they try to cross busy intersections.

“I can understand that (the district) has a money problem,” she said. “(But) it seems like they are not working for the kids.”

In the Conejo Valley, three schools have changes for the coming school year.

Thousand Oaks special-education students, who previously attended classes limited to children with disabilities, will now be integrated into classes at Park Oaks and Maple elementary schools.

The new program will allow about 15 students, most of whom have multiple learning disabilities, to enroll in some regular classes rather than be bused to one of the district’s seven campuses that enroll special-education students.

“Fifty years ago, special-education people and kids were isolated away from the world,” said Conejo Valley Supt. Jerry C. Gross, a former special-education teacher.

“We’ve gradually moved away from isolation to what we call normalization or mainstreaming,” he said. “The idea is that these youngsters and adults should be put into environments with normalcy.”

Conejo Valley schools already integrate special-education students with other pupils for at least part of the school day, but until this year Park Oaks and Maple schools did not have the facilities or staff to accept students with special needs.

“We are really trying to get them back to their neighborhood home-school environments rather than transporting them all over town,” Maple Elementary School Principal Marilyn Bayles said.

Educators at Maple in Newbury Park plan to ease their six special-education students into the new school setting over time, Bayles said.

The pupils will spend most of their school day at a “learning center” with a teaching specialist and an aide. But they will participate in regular physical education classes, library hours and recesses with other students.

“For the first year, we are proceeding on a slow basis,” she said. “We are really starting at ground level and building.”

Bayles said the gradual integration of special-education students will benefit all of Maple Elementary’s schoolchildren.

“The younger they learn to accept differences in other people the better off we are going to be,” Bayles said.

At Colina Middle School in Thousand Oaks, educators are bracing for 144 new sixth-graders to join students at the former seventh- and eighth-grade campus.

“We arranged a block of four rooms for them and lockers,” Principal Michael Waters said.

Colina students and parents supported the change to create Conejo Valley Unified’s first middle school campus last spring.

Studies by state educators have concluded that the middle school configuration offers a better educational environment for children and adolescents than junior high schools, Gross said.

“Historically, junior high has been just that . . . a replica of the high school,” Gross said. “They need a transition program that bridges being a child and an adolescent.”

Waters agreed.

“Without the three years, I don’t believe you have as much time to make that transition,” he said. “All the best judgments of educators say this is the best configuration.”

Despite the changes at the elementary and middle school levels in Thousand Oaks, returning high school students said they see nothing new about going back to school this week. “I think it is mostly the same, but you see a lot of new faces,” said Andy Clarke, a Westlake High School junior.

Newbury Park High School 12th-grader Theresa Nguyen said she was eager to start her final year of high school.

“I’m excited,” the 16-year-old said. “It’s my senior year and I want to get it over with and get to college.”

Newbury Park High registrar Brenda Rini has worked in the Thousand Oaks school system for 25 years at every grade level. And each year, she said, the first day of school conjures up memories of her own childhood.

“There is something new every day when you meet these young people,” Rini said. “But it takes you back.”

Times correspondent Jeff McDonald contributed to this story.

Back to School

Except for schools on a year-round calendar, most Ventura County schools open their doors to students this week.

School districts where students return today

* Oxnard Union High School

* Pleasant Valley

* Rio

* Somis Union

School districts where students return Wednesday

* Briggs

* Ocean View