Vista Seeks No-Busing Answer to Balance Minority School

Faced with steadfast opposition to busing from white parents, the Vista school board has decided to look for long-term ways to trim minority enrollment at a predominantly minority elementary school without busing in white pupils.

To the cheers of parents, school board members Wednesday night ordered school administrators to consider such alternatives as turning the school into a “magnet” with special programs to encourage voluntary transfers from white students, or selling the school to developers and using the money to build other schools.

The latter alternative would deprive the heavily Latino and black community around Santa Fe-California Elementary School of a popular neighborhood school within walking distance.

But it would make it easier for the school board to comply with its self-imposed rule of keeping the minority enrollment at all schools within 20 percentage points of the district average.

56% Minority and Climbing

In a school district with 33% minority students, minority enrollment at Santa Fe is 56% and rising because of boundary shifts that have sent white students in outlying areas to new schools and a trend toward higher density in the neighborhood around Santa Fe.

“We do not view Santa Fe as the Gulag Archipelago,” said Brian Whitbread, whose 8-year-old son attends the newly opened Alamosa Park Elementary. “But facts are facts. I have to think of one thing first: my school-age children.”

Among the facts that disturb parents: Santa Fe is the city’s largest elementary school, it sits in a high-crime area, and its scores on state-mandated reading achievement tests are the lowest in the district.

The controversy over Santa Fe tests the resolve of the Vista board to stick with its policy on racial and ethnic balance--a policy encouraged but not required by the state and federal governments.

Other school districts in North County and elsewhere have found that such policies make fine philosophy but rather poor politics.

In neighboring Oceanside, where minority enrollment is 55%, the board has a policy of 15 percentage points but has declined to use large-scale busing to alter the balance at elementary schools where minority enrollment exceeds 70%.

To uphold their 20-percentage-point rule, Vista board members are stuck between their reluctance to bus minority students who live within walking distance of Santa Fe and their equal, if not greater, reluctance to anger white parents by sending their children to a minority school outside their neighborhood.

Meanwhile, a drift continues toward having two school systems within the same district--a more minority one in the older parts of Vista and a heavily white one in the new upscale suburbs.

Though no decision will be made until March 23, the Vista board Wednesday night clearly favored a one-year boundary switch for next fall that would actually increase minority enrollment at Santa Fe to 59%, with hopes that it will decline as white families move into a suburban area on the northern edge of the district.

The plan would exempt all parents currently living in the rapidly growing northern part of the Vista school district from having their children forced to attend Santa Fe.

“I am very much opposed to creating an artificial situation where you bus in one group of people so you can have an artificial mix,” board member Lance Vollmer said as parents applauded. “I don’t think it’s beneficial.

” . . . The 20% is an artificial policy. The 20% was something people thought they’d never achieve so they said it was fine. Now, we’re up against the wall.”

At the urging of board member James Hagar, administrators were told to devise non-busing ideas to deal with Santa Fe over the next five years, including the possible sale of the property.

The debate over Santa Fe puts the school board in a sticky political position.

Board members plan a bond election in November and are loathe to create a controversy that could undercut chances of raising money for new schools to accommodate runaway residential growth.

Also, three board members are up for reelection in November.

“I don’t think this is the year for massive boundary changes,” school board President Marcia Viger said. “I’m putting in a political plug: We need help for a bond issue in November.”

A survey by the parent-run District Advisory Committee found strenuous opposition to busing among both white and minority parents.

Among white parents, 87% opposed busing students for racial and ethnic balance, even if the students were already riding a bus to school. Among minority parents, opposition was 65%. Among both groups, opposition was even higher to busing students who could otherwise walk to school.

Therein lies the rub for Santa Fe, where nearly three-quarters of the pupils live close enough to walk to school.

“We are not going to have a significant impact on minority enrollment (at Santa Fe) unless we bus students out of there who are current ‘walkers,’ and that’s something we don’t want to do,” Assistant Supt. Ron Riedberger said.

Teachers at Santa Fe say having many minority students from low-income families creates an added educational burden because they often come to school not as prepared to tackle learning as students from higher income families.

Tough on Teachers

“It’s difficult for teachers at Santa Fe,” Principal Rodney Goldenberg said. “Yes, classrooms are 31, 32, 33 (students), but our teachers would not mind teaching 33 children.

“The problem is when you have reading groups at second-grade and all the students are at first-grade level. Or when you have fourth-grade and third-grade teachers, and the highest reading level in the class is second grade. That’s a problem and there’s nothing to balance that out.”

The plan most favored by school members would bus 204 students from Santa Fe to a new school scheduled to open in the fall. The students are already being bused to Santa Fe and are not in the heavily minority “core” neighborhood around the school.

Taking those students from Santa Fe would reduce the average class size to 28 students but would also increase the minority enrollment to upward of 59%.

To reduce the minority enrollment, parents moving into the Mission Meadows-Jeffries Ranch portion of Alamosa Park after school closes in June could find their children bused to Santa Fe, about six miles away.

Riedberger estimates that their presence at Santa Fe would reduce minority enrollment to 53% by the end of the 1988-89 school year, but that calculation could be upended by increasing density in the neighborhood around Santa Fe, which is heavy with high-turnover rental housing.

The goal is to have children from affluent families serve as role models for Santa Fe students. White parents, however, say this means their children will be given short shrift by teachers.

Need for Top Students

“There is a need to have an influx of students who are very motivated and who are self-starters,” board member Sandee Carter said.

A proposal unveiled by Riedberger last week would have included some children already living in the Mission Meadows-Jeffries Ranch area, where three-bedroom homes sell for $150,000 to $175,000.

That proposal brought immediate opposition from parents. By Wednesday night, it was no longer part of the package presented to school board members, but parents still insisted on stating their opposition.

Only parents not yet living in the area--and thus not capable of causing political problems--would have their children potentially bused to Santa Fe. The rationale is that Alamosa is already overcrowded and that such students represent the “overflow.”

Even then, board member Vollmer wants district administrators to explore sending those students to schools other than Santa Fe, in an effort to keep down classroom size at Santa Fe even if it means keeping the minority percentage at Santa Fe above the 20-percentage-point rule.

Vollmer joined other board members in asking for administrators to study a plan to assist Santa Fe students by assigning additional teachers to the school, possibly reading specialists.

“An elementary school (Santa Fe) with more than 1,000 students in it is not an ideal learning place, regardless of what your ethnic or economic background it,” Vollmer said. “I think the potential high-achieving students are there. We just have not expended the funds to cause them to have the opportunity to achieve.”

The boundary switch is meant to last for a year. By fall 1989, another elementary school is expected to open, thus creating the need for a new round of boundary changes.