Enrollment continues to rise at Frontier high
By Michelle Knight knight@theacorn.com

Enrollment at Frontier High School has hit 452, up 150 students from last year. But district and school officials aren't concerned; the number isn't excessively high and is bound to go down, they said.

Wayne Lamas, principal of the Camarillo alternative school, said he expects the enrollment figure to follow past trends and go down later in the school year.

"It depends on when you look at enrollment. We take in kids four times a year, so it depends on when the snapshot was taken," said Lamas of the California Department of Education report that put the school's 2005-06 enrollment at 295.

Frontier is one of two alternative schools in the Oxnard Union High School District that run continuation programs. Enrollment at the other, Pacific View, is 80. Together, they represent 3.2 percent of Oxnard's 16,249 student population.

"From my standpoint, it looks like it's pretty typical-three percent is pretty typical; I don't think it's unusually high," said Martha Mutz, assistant superintendent.

Saying the information is confidential, Mutz would not disclose how many students are transferred to Frontier from each of the district's six traditional high schools.

"There are no schools that stand out," she said. "It varies from year to year, month to month; and it varies with what's going on with the kids."

Enrollment at the two Thousand Oaks alternative high schools is less than one percent of the district's enrollment, said Richard Simpson, deputy superintendent of the Conejo Valley Unified School District. Conejo Valley High School has a student population of 149; and Century has 28 students. District enrollment is 22,270.

Simpson said the district's three traditional high schools contribute equally to the continuation schools' population. He did not have exact numbers.

With state and federal agencies continually raising the bar on the academic standards students must meet-the state's Academic Performance Index and the federal government's Adequate Yearly Progress-the pressure mounts for schools to meet ever-higher targets. Might that tempt a traditional high school to transfer their poorperforming students to a continuation school?

Dan Plough, past president of the California Continuation Education Association, said abuse probably does happen.

He said the nonprofit group of educators and retired educators has asked the state for years to include a date section on assessment tests. The school would note on the test if students have been enrolled for 90 days or more. If so, the new school would be responsible for the student's test scores, he said. But if the student has been there less than 90 days, the results should be accounted to the previous school.

"That would put an end to it," said Plough, who's principal of a continuation high school in Calexico. With the present procedure, the new school is liable for test scores of all transferred students no matter how long they've been there.

In addition, state law requires districts to have a written policy outlining the criteria for voluntary and involuntary student transfers. For a school to transfer a student involuntarily to a continuation program, the student must have violated some portion of the state education code as stated in the policy.

"So why do they get away with it? The parents are uninformed regarding their rights as parents," Plough said. Other times, the situation involves parents who don't speak English well or at all. Plough said a large percentage of lowperforming students are those learning English as a second language.

"You hope people in my profession make decisions based on what's best for the kids," Plough said. "That's not necessarily always true."

Plough and Michael Hersher, an attorney with the California Department of Education, said the parents and the student then have the responsibility to challenge a transfer they believe is inappropriate.

Hersher said he doesn't know of any state oversight agency with the responsibility of verifying that each student transfer to a continuation program is legitimate or an abuse.

"I'm not exactly sure how we would go about investigating something like that," Hersher said.

Parents and students have the legal right to meet with the district for a thorough explanation and to see related documents on why an involuntary transfer is necessary.

School officials in Oxnard and Conejo Valley school districts said most of their students are transferred to alternative schools because of attendance problems or being behind in credits and not because the home school wants to reach state and federal education targets.

"Scores have nothing to do with it," said Glenn Lipman, principal of Adolfo Camarillo High School. "It's all about the student ... helping the student stay in the game towards graduation."

What's more, both districts said involuntary transfer decisions are not left up to one person, which is a safeguard against abuse. When a student has problems at school, a student study team composed of a counselor, an administrator, perhaps the school psychologist and a teacher is formed. Parents aren't necessarily included in the discussion at this stage, however.

The team tries all the intervention programs available at the school before a transfer is ever mentioned, Mutz said.

"They don't form a student study team for the purpose of a transfer until everything else has been exhausted," she said.

Involuntary transfers are good for only one year.

The district must review it annually to renew it. When a student asks for a voluntary transfer to a continuation program, they have the right to return to their home school the following year if they want to.