New School in Search of an Image and Acceptance

SIMI VALLEY — The high school’s marquee is what you might call understated: black block lettering on a white plastic background reading, “Have a safe summer.” No roaring, snarling school mascot. No brash school colors. Heck, no school name.

The mascot and colors soon will be chosen by the school’s “leadership class,” or first batch of 850 students. The name is Santa Susana, the much-ballyhooed, full-fledged magnet high school emphasizing performing arts and technology. And the marquee’s nondescript sign seems only appropriate for a school still in the process of defining itself.

Even if it doesn’t look like much yet, just a clump of white buildings and near empty classrooms, the sense of excitement at Santa Susana is palpable.

Before the first textbook has been opened, Simi Valley Unified School District magnet coordinator Judy Cannings is predicting the school’s future success: “If we follow the other magnet schools we’ve visited, we’ll probably have a waiting list in the next two years, if not next year.”

Despite the fact that the school is still undergoing earthquake repairs about three weeks before it is scheduled to open, Principal Patricia Hauser is “absolutely not worried about us coming together.” But she does have one small concern: “Sometimes I look around . . . and say, ‘Ohmigosh, am I going to be good enough for what’s going on here?’ ”

Hauser, and the school itself, probably will face that question daily as the school forges a curriculum, builds an academic community and faces adversity. Lots of adversity.

By school board mandate, Santa Susana replaced Sequoia Middle School at the Cochran Avenue campus. In its first year, the new school will keep Sequoia’s eighth-graders on site, along with new classes of ninth- and 10th-graders. Over the next two years, a junior and senior class will be added.

But accommodations for Sequoia’s students notwithstanding, many area parents are still angered by the change.

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Some object that the opening of the magnet high school was a smoke screen for an unpopular and costly district plan to reconfigure all high schools--including Simi Valley, Royal and Apollo Continuation--from three- to four-year institutions. Shifting ninth-graders into the high schools will likely cost $500,000 for start-up and another $200,000 annually.

Naysayers further contend that a school emphasizing technology, such as Santa Susana, is going to cost a bundle of money--more than the $100,000 in state start-up money allocated by the Simi Valley district.

To those detractors, Hauser has a simple response. “My job,” she patiently explained, “is to make this a really good school. We are here to share information and to be very open about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. My role is not to do anything deliberately to change how anybody else thinks.”

Rather than try to change minds, Hauser and others prefer to enumerate Santa Susana’s strengths.

Santa Susana will likely have high college-bound percentages and low dropout rates, predicted Robert Purvis, the district’s interim superintendent. “The families and children who attend these magnet schools typically have a very high interest in education. That’s the difference,” he said.

Aside from parent and student involvement, hopes are pinned on an innovative curriculum, which at first glance looks much the same as that of any other Ventura County high school. Santa Susana offers Advanced Placement and honors classes, English, math, foreign languages, history and science.

What will not be the same, Cannings said, are the electives.

“We won’t be offering traditional electives--electronics, auto body and those kinds of things,” she said. “What we will have are different types of electives. I think of stage set design. I think of makeup. I think of the applied sciences . . . computer programming, software development.” And then there’s animation, screenplay writing and computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering.

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Those core classes will have a different spin too. The school’s thematic mantra is “integrated curriculum,” which magnet coordinator Cannings defines as “the connection between classes and the real world.”

In layman’s terms, that means that technology and performing arts will be emphasized even in nonperforming arts, nontechnology classes, such as gym. Artistic students can take dance for their physical education requirement. For the technophiles, the school’s two gym teachers are working to create a fitness lab, with cardiovascular monitors to show how physical fitness affects a person’s body and quality of life.

Integrated curriculum will also be in evidence in student projects, according to Principal Hauser. For example, once a semester all ninth-graders may be asked to complete a multimedia project about, say, traveling the Silk Road in China, she said.

Around that theme, students would write journals in their English class; perform experiments to determine whether the water along the Silk Road is safe to drink in science class; and replicate Chinese artifacts in art. A final presentation on the topic could be a computer and video display for some, and a play for others.

The school, however, will not field its own sports teams, except intramurals, nor will it have its own marching band. Santa Susana students can play sports or join the marching band at their neighborhood schools.

That doesn’t really bother Nan Mostacciuolo, a vocal detractor of the school. And she’s all in favor of the integrated curriculum. What irks this mother of six Simi Valley students is that the school district is too poor to support a fancy magnet school.

Besides, she said, the district would serve more students by equally distributing computers among all four high schools, thus creating many smaller magnet programs, rather than concentrating them at Santa Susana, which strives to eventually have a computer for every student.

Debbie Sandland, the only school board member to oppose the creation of a magnet school a year ago, is similarly concerned that the lion’s share of district technology funds may soon end up in Santa Susana’s classrooms.

“I do not see that as an equal opportunity education,” she said. Having dropped her opposition to the project, Sandland said she’s taking a wait-and-see attitude for the time being.

“Now that the magnet school is about to open, I do hope that the program is successful,” she said.

Mostacciuolo is not so forgiving.

“I think our school board wanted to up our image” with the new school, Mostacciuolo fumed. “I think creating a magnet was a personal little badge for them to wear: ‘I created a magnet. Simi Valley had the first [county high school] magnet. We’re the best.’ ”

Without saying it explicitly, she hit on a point that has persistently dogged the magnet school--charges of elitism.

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Administrators deny those allegations, noting that the school is open to all comers and that students do not have to audition or take an intelligence test to gain admission, as is the practice in other magnet programs.

Trustee Carla Kurachi said she would empathize with the cries of snobbery if the opening of Santa Susana were denying resources to other students.

But “it’s not hurting other programs and other kids’ education,” Kurachi said. “I don’t know why people should be so threatened to offer kids a choice. I don’t think we have cookie-cutter kids, and I don’t think we should have cookie-cutter schools.”

At the same time, innovation, the air of exclusivity and specialization seem to be part of Santa Susana’s attraction for some parents and incoming students and teachers.

Math and computer science teacher Mark Sheinberg, one of the school’s 37 instructors, said he is intrigued to teach in a school where computers are used to their full potential.

At Sheinberg’s former school, Simi Valley’s Hillside Junior High, and at other high schools, computers are used mostly for word processing and a smidgen of programming. “But there’s a lot more computers can do,” he said.

Incoming student Lee Tuffley, who will enter the ninth grade this fall, already repairs and programs his family computer, so Santa Susana seemed like a natural choice.

“I expect to get more familiar with computers,” he said. Another part of the appeal is “just that it’s a different kind of school.”

His mother, Debie Tuffley, expects that attending Santa Susana will help her 15-year-old son prepare for college or a career in computers. Comparing her son’s future high school to the performing arts high school from the television show “Fame,” she said Santa Susana will be a professional school but without the price tag.

“It makes [Lee] feel really special,” she said. “He’s proud of saying he goes there. . . . And it’ll be more challenging. My son’s a good student, you know; he gets A’s and Bs. But now it’s A time; we won’t take Bs anymore.”

Parent and school board member Kurachi also has a 10th-grade son, Nick, who will attend the magnet school.

Kurachi said that given Nick’s fondness for technology and hands-on learning, he “really thought that would be a good placement for him. Plus, I think the smaller environment will be more conducive to his learning style. He has always liked a smaller learning environment where you almost get to know everybody.”

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Incoming ninth-grader Erik McLaughlan, skateboarding outside Simi Valley High, said the school’s arts emphasis attracted him. “I wanted to try something new because I’m into the acting business,” said the 14-year-old whose wallet chain scrapes his blue-jeaned knee. “I wanted to try the special program and to take classes I couldn’t take anywhere else.”

Outside Simi Valley High summer school, Rosa Zapata said she too found the magnet school’s arts focus appealing, and might have attended Santa Susana had the school accepted 11th-graders in its first year.

But the smaller high school and the district reconfiguration are “going to crowd a lot more kids at Simi Valley and Royal high schools,” Rosa said.

Both Eric and Rosa, whose black hair is streaked with coral at the crown, said they were hoping Santa Susana might be a little less conservative than the existing high schools.

All of which raises the question: How will this traditional community deal with kids with oddly colored hair and pierced body parts talking about “integrated curriculum” while taking dance for their physical education requirement?

Interim schools Supt. Purvis thinks the city will take it all in stride.

“Simi Valley is a chunk of America that is pretty conservative. Strong family values. Good neighborhood schools. Zero tolerance for drugs,” said Purvis, who headed the school district between 1990 and 1993. “However . . . I don’t think I’ve ever observed that the community expects the [school] district to restrict studies because of conservatism.”

The students with the creative hair color, he chuckled, already attend Simi, Royal and Apollo highs. They’ll attend Santa Susana too.