Oak Park schools thinking outside the box
By Sophia Fischer sfischer@theacorn.com

The Oak Park Unified School District is putting out the welcome mat for students who live out of town.

With declining enrollment affecting districts statewide and a proposed state budget that threatens to cut education dollars, Oak Park needs the outofdistrict students to make up the shortfall, according to Superintendent Tony Knight.

The district is paid several thousand dollars by the state for each student enrolled, money the district uses to help balance its budget.

"I don't know what we would do without those out-of-district students. We'd have to cut $2 million in programs and teachers," Knight said.

Oak Park currently has 3,718 students enrolled on its six campuses, plus another 115 who attend the Oak Park Independent program. There are 720 students who attend the schools on interdistrict permits, and the district is calling for more.

Although new students transfer into the district in all grades, the key indicator of a school's projected enrollment is its kindergarten registration. Only 23 resident students have signed up for fall kindergarten classes at Oak Hills.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Oak Hills had to turn students away because there wasn't enough room for everyone who wanted to attend, Knight said. The campus, built to accommodate 360 kids, swelled to 630 to try to meet demand. Nonresident children were not permitted.

"People would line up hours before the office opened," Knight said. "If you didn't register your child on the first day you were assigned to another school."

Part of what made Oak Hills so popular was innovation, Knight said.

The school had the first computer network in the district and was the first site connected to the Internet. The school went on to earn numerous awards, including national blue ribbons in 1992 and 2001, and was honored as a state distinguished school with special recognition in the arts and a Bravo award for programs in art and drama.

The quality of the school hasn't changed, according to Knight, but local demographics have. The students that crowded the school not long ago have grown older and graduated, but their families still reside in the district.

The combination of an aging population and high housing costs are twin culprits, Knight said.

"The whole situation in Oak Park is exacerbated at Oak Hills," he said.

"My goodness, we can't have just one class," said Oak Hills Principal Leslie Heilbron. "We need the richness, the diversity those numbers bring to continue the work that we're doing. . . . We need the parent support, the volunteers, especially in kindergarten."

Oak Park is a "District of Choice," a state designation renewable annually that allows a district to accept nonresident students. The privilege allows interdistrict students to remain in the district until high school graduation without having to renew their permit.

"We offer a sort of boutique program because we're a smaller size district and highly tailored to students' needs," Knight said. "We've always been one of the top-performing school districts in California."

Despite its small population, the Oak Park district has earned a number of accolades over the years, including four national blue ribbon awards, California Distinguished School awards for all school sites and a California League of Middle Schools award for Medea Creek in 2004. That same year, Newsweek magazine ranked Oak Park High School among the top 100 nationwide. Standard & Poor's independent ranking service has also recognized Oak Park schools.

Elementary school enrollment statewide should begin to grow again in 2010, according to a study by the California Department of Finance. Knight remains optimistic that the number of Oak Park students eventually will increase as well..

"We will return to those days over time," Knight said. "The houses will fill again."