A better place to learn

Jennifer Kho

It’s an ageless theme common in conversations throughout Costa Mesa.

For years, residents have said the quality of the schools on the

Westside are not up to par.

Test scores are low, and many residents say they think basic lessons

are being neglected while schools focus on teaching Spanish-speaking

students English.

While there aren’t any hard statistics to back it up, some residents

-- including Councilman Chris Steel, who has long campaigned on the issue

-- have also said that a steady stream of illegal immigrants who don’t

speak English has been a big factor in lowering the quality of the

schools.

But educators at Pomona, Rea, Wilson, Victoria and Whittier elementary

schools and Estancia High School are working to turn the tide of those

public perceptions.

“The Westside schools have as many [Advanced Placement] classes as any

school in the district,” said Susan Despenas, Newport-Mesa Unified School

District’s assistant superintendent of elementary education. “That’s a

message that has somehow been lost.”

Still, many of the families in the pricier Westside neighborhoods,

including the bluffs and California Seabreeze, are notably absent from

enrollment at Whittier Elementary School, principal Sharon Blakely said.

“Erroneous comments made by those who don’t understand what we do here

have an effect, but the door is open,” she said. “It is our job to serve

all needs even though most children in this community are not

socioeconomically wealthy.”

MAKING THE CHOICE

Chris Hayden, a California Seabreeze resident whose daughter goes to

Pegasus School, a private school in Huntington Beach, said he thinks his

daughter is getting a better education at the school than she would have

in a Westside public school.

Westside schools “don’t have a record of having provided a good

education,” he said. “If you have a school where a large percentage of

the students are going to be learning English, then the schools are going

to be spending a lot of time [teaching English and] then other things

need to be sacrificed in terms of time to allow them to do that.”

Hayden said he knows of no homeowners in his neighborhood who send

their children to Costa Mesa public schools and added that he has seen

some families move out because of the schools, while empty-nest and

non-family households have moved in.

“School is about a number of things, and if 96% of the school is very

similar, children of recent immigrants, that’s not a wide mix,” Hayden

said. “If your child isn’t like that, it would certainly be a little

awkward for everybody because your child wouldn’t have a lot in common

with other children. I don’t think anything can be done to get us to send

our children to those schools. Education is a real problem on the

Westside.”

EXAMINING THE PERCEPTIONS

Newport-Mesa Supt. Robert Barbot said the schools’ growing enrollment

numbers show that more families, not fewer, are attending Westside

schools.

Enrollment in the schools had dropped from 3,377 during the 1993-94

school year to 2,588 in the 1996-97 school year, but has grown since then

to 4,219 this year.

The statistics for the 1993-94 school year were the earliest figures

available.

Meanwhile, the number of Latinos in the city has steadily increased

from 20% of the population in 1990 to 31.8% in 2000, according to census

reports.

On the Westside, Latinos in 1997 made up 44% of the population,

according to a survey that includes the latest figure available. And

Latinos make up a greater percentage in the Westside schools.

The Westside schools had 67.3% Latino students in 1993-94, 74.5% in

1996-97 and now average about 80%, with Victoria Elementary School having

the lowest percentage at 43% and Pomona Elementary School having the

highest at 97%.

According to the 2000 Academic Performance Index, commonly referred to

as API, English language learners made up 26% of the student population

at Victoria Elementary School and 85% of the population at Pomona

Elementary School.

The API ranks schools based on a standardized test and compares them

with demographically similar school. In that comparison, the rankings go

from one, the lowest, to 10, the highest.

Scores are rising at the schools, despite the increasing numbers of

immigrants.

API scores in 2000 were between 16 and 83 points higher than the 1999

scores. Compared with similar schools, Rea, Pomona and Whittier received

perfect 10s; Victoria and Estancia are ranked as 9s; and Wilson ranked a

4.

The idea that “white flight” from the school district has increased

with the influx of Latinos is a recent one, said Rod MacMillian, a former

district board member who has lived on the Westside since 1963 and lived

on the Eastside before that from 1945 to 1963.

The opposite was once true. Other races, particularly whites, have

moved into the then-predominantly Latino schools on the Westside, he

said.

“Way back, it was primarily the Latino side of town,” MacMillian said.

“After the Freedom Homes were built, the switch came so there were more

Anglos. Then, as now, people found that homes on the Westside, with the

exclusion of the property on the bluffs, were homes they could afford.”

Transfers both in and out of the Westside schools were common, he

said.

“I think it was close to a wash overall,” MacMillian said. “And it’s

not just ‘white flight.’ There are other reasons, such as religious

reasons. It’s just parental choice.”

District trustee Wendy Leece, who represents most of the Westside

schools, said in the last 28 years she has seen parents who would

otherwise send their children to neighborhood schools becoming

disenfranchised from the system.

“Many stopped sending their children to our schools because more

emphasis was put on English-language learners than on the programs for

English-speaking children,” she said. “Parents want what is best for

their kids, and they don’t want to be perceived as troublemakers, so they

will go across town to another school or to a private school.

“Many other parents have left because of the perception of gang

activity, but this is not true. There are many misperceptions about

Estancia, but it is a wonderful school, and it is very safe. Of all the

schools, Estancia has the fewest [zero-tolerance] referrals for drugs,

alcohol, weapons, etc.”

Dealing with the changing demographics -- first the influx of whites

and now the influx of Latinos -- has been a challenge for the district

since the beginning.

In 1930, the district opened Monte Vista School for “Mexicans only,”

an idea that would probably not be greeted with much enthusiasm today.

Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision

overturning the notion of “separate but equal” facilities for different

ethnic groups, would not take place until 1954.

The Freedom Homes, the first tract housing in Orange County, were

built between 1951 and 1953 to address a nationwide housing shortage

after World War II.

The first Westside school, Costa Mesa School, had been open for 30

years by 1953. The original building at 19th Street and Newport Boulevard

was destroyed in the 1933 earthquake and was replaced with Main School,

which later became Clara McNally School.

Now, the lot holds the Federal Pacific Savings Plaza, a Spanish-style

building that Hudson Properties bought in March to rent as office space.

GETTING THE VERY BEST

Some Costa Mesa residents believe the public schools are simply not

focused on the top students.

Laura Hathaway, founder and director of Pegasus School in Huntington

Beach, said 31 of the school’s 500 students are Costa Mesa residents,

with many others coming from Newport Beach.

The reasons parents send their children to Pegasus include a ratio of

one teacher and one assistant for each class of between 18 and 20

students, the advanced curriculum, the well-rounded environment and the

high parent participation, about 300 volunteers strong.

“This is a school for bright and gifted children,” Hathaway said. “We

have a rigorous and challenging curriculum and individualized attention

in a well-rounded environment with creative experimentation, not just

classroom learning. Even in a small classroom in a public school,

teachers have to teach to the middle or the bottom of the class. They

can’t teach to the top of the class.”

But many principals and district officials say the idea that top

students don’t reach their potential at public schools is wrong.

“I feel strongly that we offer the same level of education as any

other school in the district,” Pomona Elementary School Principal Julie

McCormick said. “We offer additional language support, but otherwise we

face exactly the same educational challenges.”

Blakely, the Whittier principal, said by the second grade, children

are being prepared for Gifted And Talented Education, a program that

starts two years later.

Different programs target English and non-English speakers, and the

school assesses children individually to determine where they are and

what they need, she said.

Activities in every subject also differentiate between children who

need more help in that subject and children who are ready to move on to

allow children to learn at their own pace, Blakely said.

A big reason for the perception has to do with standardized test

scores, which don’t tell the whole story, Barbot said.

“They are only one measurement, one dimension, and the world is three

dimensional,” he said.

The scores themselves do not reflect the quality of education children

are getting because they compare the English skills of students who don’t

yet speak English with those of students who have spoken it all of their

lives, said Estancia High School Principal Tom Antal.

“I was standing in front of English-language learners who just arrived

in the country, and I had to explain they were going to take a test in

English,” he said. “They couldn’t even understand the instructions in

English, so what kind of viable example is that? Those scores are mixed

in with the others. You have to compare apples to apples. If you compare

students with similar experiences, you get a different story.”

But Leece said the district needs to teach students English more

quickly -- in an average of one year -- so that test scores increase.

“Some parents have left this neighborhood school community because of

very low student test scores,” she said. “Parents naturally want more for

their own kids but don’t have time to wait until the scores go up.”

Students are entering kindergarten better prepared and with a better

understanding of English, said Nancy Bammer, a kindergarten teacher at

Pomona Elementary School.

INVOLVING PARENTS

It also is a misperception that there is less parent participation in

Westside schools and that Latinos aren’t as involved in schools as

parents of other races, Despenas said.

“The stereotype is that Latinos are less educated and don’t care about

their kids, and that is just not true,” she said.

A minimum of 14 parents attend preschool with their children at Pomona

Elementary School each day as part of a program to encourage parent

participation and English learning. Whittier and Wilson elementary

schools also have the preschool program, altogether teaching hundreds of

children and many of their parents English before kindergarten.

Rosa Garcia, a Whittier parent attending the preschool program with

her 5-year-old son, Ivan Jiminez, said she is participating to prepare

him for kindergarten and to give him social experience with other young

children.

“It’s a fine program,” she said, speaking in Spanish. “He’s beginning

to learn his ABCs, to get along with others and to make friends. I’m

learning English too.”

Many parents, including Garcia, also attend parent education classes

to learn how to help their children get ahead.

Barbot said it is wrong to think that families on the Westside are

disadvantaged in every way.

“Some might not have as much money as other families, but we have

students in other parts of the district who hardly even see their

parents,” he said. “The situation of families on the Westside is one that

some other parts of the city look at with envy.”

One reason for the perception that Latinos are less involved could be

that, historically, the Westside schools received fewer parental

financial contributions than the Eastside, MacMilliansaid.

“When we unified in 1966, it was allegedly to provide equal programs

and services, but some schools on the Westside never received some of the

same support as other schools,” he said. “For example, some Westside

schools didn’t get gyms and other improvements that other schools got,

mainly because of a difference in community support. Other schools were

able to generate more parental financial support for getting things

done.”

But the contributions no longer affect programming at Westside

schools, which have used grants and other money to make up the

difference, Antal said.

“We offer all the programs that a school twice our size does,” he

said. “We offer all the athletic teams and most of the Advanced Placement

classes you can get anywhere.”

Barbot said the teachers are also as good as any in the district.

“We worked really hard to be sure that the quality of teachers we have

on the Westside are as good or better as any other in the district

because they need to be able to teach to different levels of students,”

he said.

PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

Although the district has worked hard to meet the needs of all

students, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, Barbot

said.

“I’m not saying that we can’t improve,” he said. “Of course we can,

but we need to work on the problems that are actually there, not on the

misperceptions that are out there.”

A variety of new programs are in the works, such as creating schools

that specialize in different areas, more after-school programs and an

expanded literacy program.

Leece said her goal is to get “back to the basics,” emphasizing

reading, writing and math. She said she thinks students should be

expected to learn to speak, read and write in English in an average of a

year and advocates an English language “immersion” school.

“There are so many good things going on that it appears we are headed

in the right direction,” Leece said. “But there is a lot under the

surface that has accumulated over many years. There is the mind-set that

the government has answers to all of the problems that people face and

that people, especially poor immigrants, need government programs to

succeed. But it is not government’s job to find ways to make sure all

kids have a level playing field. I believe all people are capable of

success without the government schools acting as ‘nanny.”’

School and district representatives said they hope more people will

come out and see the schools for themselves.

“We are trying to get the message out to Anglos to engage in our

public schools,” Despenas said. “We can and do serve their needs. If we

have families that are interested, we can also make changes to

accommodate them, but they need to come back before we can do that.”