WITH ALL THE TALK ABOUT reforming public education these days, it's wonderful to see a high school which is already blazing trails on its own. I dropped by the new campus of El Camino High School at Ventura College last week for a tour with Principal Kelsie Sims.

The four-year independent study public high school, formerly situated on Dean Drive, now shares its campus with Ventura College. Students can earn an associate degree while in high school without paying college tuition and enter a four-year university with considerable credits already completed. With the cost of a college education so high these days, El Camino High School's unique independent program makes good sense.

It's the only independent study high school located on a college campus which offers the full range of A-G series college prep courses and is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Sims is the kind of principal every teen-ager wants. Young and energetic, she juggles multiple tasks with ease and keeps tabs on everyone with a motherly eye. While talking to a visitor about the school recently, she stopped mid-sentence to open her office window and call out a friendly greeting to a passing girl.

STUDENTS COME FROM all over the county and from neighboring Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties, too. Many of the 300 enrolled are dynamic teens already busy making their mark on the world. "El Camino provides an opportunity to students to explore their passions and interests and still have it be a high school experience," Sims said.

There's the young woman who now ranks third in the world among female surfers; another is a competitive ice skater and one senior plays in a local symphony orchestra.

Students take classes at VC and also work one-on-one with a teacher. They have full access to college facilities such as the library. "All of my students are over there studying," Sims said. Many concurrently complete certificate programs in various disciplines.

Students also volunteer their time around the city. "I have a high school student in nearly every elementary school in the district," Sims said.

It's clear El Camino has figured out a way to meet the challenge of educating today's busy teens.

El Camino High School, located at 61 Day Rd. in Ventura, is holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new campus at 3 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 5. For more information about the school, which is still accepting students, call (805) 289-7955.

A FULL STAFF OF SCHOOL RESOURCE OFFICERS are about to be restored to our high school campuses after being missing in action for several years.

On Monday night, the City Council will vote on authorizing an agreement between the Ventura Unified School District and the Ventura Police Department to reinstate this valuable program citywide and I couldn't be more thrilled that this is finally happening. I expect it to pass overwhelmingly.

The city and schools partnered to bring back this much-needed program which was whittled away year after year and finally pulled due to a loss of grant funding and the city's need to put the officers back out on patrol to reduce 911-call response times. One officer was put back at Buena High School in January but more were needed.

The SRO program is a true example of "you can pay a little now or a lot later." The right intervention can make all the difference in a young life. These three officers will also respond to calls around the areas of the schools, provide law-related information to students and parents, maintain a safe environment and perform a myriad of other duties.

The SROs will also work with the School Attendance and Review Board to visit the homes of children who are truant from school. There is often a reason why these kids aren't in school and it isn't pretty.

I KNOW WE'D ALL LIKE TO THINK that there aren't drugs, alcohol and gangs at our campuses, but sadly, it's all there. In the past, the SROs have even been able to solve outside crimes by working through tips gleaned from students.

I've been helping to highlight the value of this program for years. One year through Save Our Schools we privately raised enough money to buy back the middle school SRO for one year. I volunteered my time to make phone calls for the city's Public Safety Initiative which would have restored the program. It failed after receiving 61 percent of the vote. I have addressed the City Council numerous times on this issue and sat on a task force with the Chamber of Commerce to help study ways to privately raise funds. None of this solved the problem.

Where is the city's half of the funding coming from now? It will come from the new 911 fee, which will offset the city's costs for operating the 911 call center and free up dollars for the SROs and a roving team of officers for trouble spots in the city. In all the hubbub over the fee, what it will actually pay for has been lost in the squabbling.

It hasn't been easy for the school district to come up with its half of the funding, either, in these troubled budget times. But they considered it a priority and made it happen.

If the program helps put just one young person back on track, the long battle will have been worth it.

TONY BARNES HAS SEEN the power of music firsthand. As a teacher at Oxnard's Curren Elementary School he witnessed a miracle of sorts when a sixth-grader with selective mutism who had never spoken to an adult outside his own family before finally opened up.

"I brought my guitar and gave him my attention," Barnes explained quite simply.

Music turned Barnes around, too. "I came from a pretty horrific background. My brother was in juvenile hall and I was almost there, too." He credits his own fifth-grade teacher with starting the musical spark which changed his life and has led him on a singular mission to make sure every child has the experience of playing an instrument.

Barnes founded a non-profit group called Peace Thru Music to do just that. Since 2002 he has visited area schools and community groups donating instruments and spreading the joys of music with an infectious enthusiasm which also rubs off on the adults he encounters.

"There are any number of kids who have never held an instrument," explained Peace Thru Music Executive Director Heather Mackinga. The group's goal is to provide instruments to children who have demonstrated need and eventually establish a fund to pay for lessons.

BUT IT'S MORE THAN JUST THAT, Barnes said. "Kids need places to go. They need accomplishment." The group's core mission is to teach conflict resolution along with musical skills. While out visiting schools with his guitar, Barnes often can be heard leading the chant, "Pick on strings, not living things."

It all resonates with the students, Mackinga says. "Tony has an amazing ability to connect to the kids and get their attention."

Barnes laments the back-burner status music has been relegated to in the lower grades. His group was instrumental in jumpstarting the Bronco Band at Will Rogers Elementary, the only one in any of Ventura's elementary schools.

Peace Thru Music is struggling a bit with funding, Barnes said, as are most non-profits these days. They recently received a boost when MTV gave the group a plug and assisted in providing instruments. Because of that, Mark Burnett Productions of "Survivor" fame asked Peace Thru Music to be involved in an upcoming musical reality show, "Jingles," Mackinga said. The group is also hoping to publish, as a fundraiser, a book with short stories from famous musicians.

IN THE MEAN TIME, Barnes is only too happy to partner with other kid-friendly organizations who also need a boost. Peace Thru Music has helped with open microphone nights at Ventura's new City Corps, a civic works project for at-risk kids. The two groups are currently holding a used musical instrument drive. (Bring donations to the City Corps office at 77 N. California St., between 1 and 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays.) And the group is lining up talent to play before Kevin Costner's band Modern West takes the stage this Saturday in Downtown Ventura.

"We're all like musical instruments in a band when we work together," Barnes explained.

For more information about Peace Thru Music, go to www.peacethrumusic.org. For information about City Corps, which is looking for volunteer youth leaders ages 18 to 24, call 653-2351

WHY DIDN'T WE have stuff like this when I was a kid?

That was my first thought as I wandered around SummerFest yesterday at the Ventura Unified School District Education Service Center. This is the third year of this free, family event and the word has gone out that this is one not to be missed. We estimated nearly 6,000 people attended!

My friend and fellow Ventura Education Partnership board member Ed Wehan spends a good part of his life organizing this annual day of healthy and fun activities for children. Wehan's a dynamo. He's a runner, hiker and tireless advocate for all things healthy. He's aided and abetted in his SummerFest efforts by some of the best volunteers around. A big thanks to our great sponsors for making this happen, too!

"SummerFest is an amazing role-model event that allows the youth of this community to celebrate physical activity and good nutritional habits without them ever knowing it," Wehan told me. "With the support of parents, educators, government officials and our business community, kids learn the importance all of us put on a healthy, fit lifestyle. This means smarter and healthier kids."

I watched kids having a blast exercising yesterday on all manner of activities from rope bridges to obstacle courses to bike rodeos to a giant inflatable boat. There was also amazing entertainment on the stage and, of course, healthy food.

It was a great outlet for our local sports- and child-oriented businesses, too, as many rented booths at the venue and signed up lots of new customers.

In an electronic age where kids are often drawn to sedentary activities, this event is a winner!

SOMETIMES IT IS NECESSARY to go out of your comfort zone when it comes to advocating for what you believe in. Five years ago I, along with many other Ventura parents who had never been politically active before, formed a group called Save Our Schools to deal with impending education budget cuts. We raised money and later held a rally at the Ventura County Government Center that drew nearly 1,000 people.

Here we are five years later in the same leaky boat. I'm a true believer that every child deserves a chance to succeed and that it is our responsibility as a great and moral country to adequately fund public education. Our governor's current proposed cut of $4.8 billion to our schools fails to do that.

Our schools do miraculous things with the resources they have, and yet I am tired of hearing teachers tell me they spend thousands of their own dollars to buy supplies for their classrooms, that they can't adequately reach all children with these often huge class sizes and that there is not enough funding for P.E., libraries, counseling, technology, music and art. I am sick of watching our kids go door to door hawking cookie dough just to raise money for a field trip.

We are 46th in the nation in per pupil funding. This is all despite the fact that California has a relatively high capacity to fund its schools, as measured by per capita personal income. Our governor recently commissioned a group of experts to propose dramatic education reform. This committee concluded we need to spend another $10.5 billion in this state just to get the job done right. Yet our governor decided to take away $4 billion instead.

SO WE ARE GOING to rally again. Please join us on Friday, April 18 at the Buena High School Quad at 4 p.m. We're going to have a spirited event with many speakers including Assemblyman Pedro Nava, State Senate candidate Hannah-Beth Jackson, Congressional candidate Jill Martinez, Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Chuck Weis, Ventura Superintendent Trudy Arriaga, Ventura Board of Education President John Walker, Ventura Board of Education Vice President Mary Haffner, Ventura County Board of Education Trustee ML Peterson, VUEA President Stephen Blum, and California Teachers Association Secretary Dan Vaughn. We will announce more important speakers and entertainment as the event draws closer. Please check back here and at the Ventura Education Partnership web site for updates.

I am calling on everyone who cares about the future of our children to attend this rally and show their support. We need to make our voices heard all the way up to Sacramento. It's that important.

I AM TIRED of watching our teachers and kids be used as political ping pong balls in the games they play up in Sacramento.

This is how it goes every time there are state budget troubles: The governor proposes a draconian budget in January which will slash spending across the board and suspend guaranteed Prop. 98 monies, and then nothing is decided by our battling legislators until late in the summer. It puts our schools in the untenable position of having to make budget decisions many months before they will actually know what their funding levels will be.

You see, the deadline for letting teachers know whether or not they will have jobs next year is this Saturday. So classrooms across the state are being dismantled now in anticipation of $4.4 billion in budget cuts. It will be up to school administrators to try to put them back together again next fall if the situation improves.

The Ventura Unified School District Board of Education Tuesday night approved a calculated move to minimize the potential damage of $4 million in budget cuts: the use of one-time funds combined with budget reductions to balance the 2008-09 budget.

The shifting of funds, or "robbing Peter to pay Paul," as Board Member Velma Lomax called it, will still result in the loss of 12 regular education teachers, a decrease in counselors, reduced funding for librarians and technology staff, no funding for any equipment purchases and reduced funding for staff development.

Superintendent Trudy Arriaga called the district's funding strategy "unusual."

"This has happened so fast and so furious we are doing what we can to get by until we have some certainty. You only do this when it's raining, and it's pouring," she said.

IF EDUCATION CUTS CONTINUE in the 2009-10 school year, district officials said, class sizes could increase in all grades, and trimming could be done in athletic programs, counseling, special education, health programs, child care, after-school programs, teacher support, adult education, administration and support staff, maintenance, equipment, supplies, technology and child nutrition services -- basically everything the school district does.

"The following year, we won't be just not fixing things," Arriaga said. "We won't be serving."

California is already 46th in the nation in per-pupil spending. We're $2,000 below the national average, despite being the eighth largest economy in the world. Yet, our governor has proposed spending $800 less per-pupil in his latest budget.

"This budget leaves all children behind," Arriaga said.

With our teachers and students the ping pong balls, I know just what I'd like to do with those paddles. Are you listening, Sacramento?

IT'S TIME FOR A SHAMELESS PLUG for an organization near and dear to my heart: The Ventura Education Partnership. Our biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up on Saturday night: the Festival of Talent, which showcases our most talented youth.

In the past year, VEP has given more than $100,000 to Ventura Unified School District classrooms through a teacher granting program. Our Healthy Schools Collaborative has distributed nearly $30,000 to health and wellness programs and our Arts Collaborative is working with the City of Ventura on an Arts Master Plan for the district.

We've done great work and have forged wonderful partnerships within the business community and the city. Our volunteers and donors are among the brightest, most motivated people I have ever known. We are united by a common bond: to do what is best for our community's children. It is an honor to be among this group of citizens.

AND YET, IN OUR HEARTS, we realize that despite our valiant efforts, we will never be able to do by ourselves what we really want: raise California's per-pupil spending out of the dark basement in which it has dwelled for many years. We're 46th in the nation right now and trailing the national average by nearly $2,000 per student. This is all despite the fact that California has a relatively high capacity to fund its schools, as measured by per capita personal income.

Just imagine, in 1969-70 we were actually $400 above the national average in per-pupil spending. How very far we have fallen.

Our governor will be asking us to make even more cuts in the coming months. Could we fall even lower than 46th? At a recent VEP meeting, VUSD Superintendent Trudy Arriaga detailed what those cuts would mean for Ventura's kids: just under $1 million this year and likely $4 million the next.

"It will be devastating to our classrooms yet again," she said. "Do the children of California deserve to be 46th in the nation?"

And so we in the Ventura Education Partnership and in school foundations and PTAs across the state plug away at fundraisers to help fill in a few gaps. We sell cookie dough and wrapping paper. We stage talent shows and jog-a-thons and car washes. We work hard and are rewarded for our efforts by bright, smiling little faces. It's worth every bit of our time.

Yet we know it is just a band-aid...

Come watch a great show Saturday. The Festival of Talent starts at 7 p.m. in the Ventura High School Auditorium. Tickets are $10 and available for pre-sale at all Ventura school sites. They will be $15 at the door. Come early and sample hors d'oeuvres and bid on silent auction prizes. Click here for more information about the Ventura Education Partnership.

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