Santa Ana Schools

School administrators in Santa Ana are ratcheting up construction efforts with the recent hiring of an architect to oversee the work and a well-known Latino public relations agency to draw attention to expansion projects starting at four elementary schools in the overcrowded district. Both moves demonstrate how Santa Ana Unified School District is preparing to spend $145 million in bond funds approved by city voters as Measure C in 1999.

Re "Tustin Marine Base Fight Proves to Be a Learn-Learn Situation," Dana Parsons, May 15: Did Santa Ana Unified School District learn from its contentious negotiations with Tustin? Recent activities suggest the district is still using the same unfair and shameful techniques that prompted all the contention with Tustin. As Dana Parsons' column points out, Tustin officials were offended and hunkered down in the face of allegations of discrimination orchestrated by the district. We are longtime residents of an ethnically diverse neighborhood of Santa Ana, and when we first read of the Tustin debate, we ignorantly sided with the schools.

Imagine two Santa Ana classrooms where students study with their teachers by day. At night, their parents occupy the same desks, taking vocational or English classes by satellite from Mexico on a big-screen TV. That's the aim of a pilot program proposed at Carr Intermediate School in partnership with the Mexican government. Using a study plan and software developed in Mexico, parents could learn high school basics and English at night.

A group has filed a petition to recall a school board member whom they accuse of pushing illegally for bilingual education and neglecting parents' concerns. Beatriz Salas, one of those who filed papers with the Orange County registrar Monday, alleged that Santa Ana Unified School District trustee Nativo V. Lopez directed district teachers to encourage parents to sign waivers so their children would be exempt from English-immersion classes.

The U.S. Navy has ordered Tustin to make a deal by Thursday to give land at the Tustin helicopter base to two Santa Ana school districts, or it will sell the base to developers and leave the city empty-handed. In an ultimatum to Tustin Mayor Jeffery M. Thomas, Assistant Secretary of the Navy H.T. Johnson rejected the city's claim that handing over land to the Santa Ana schools would undermine the financial success of its base redevelopment plan.

Rick Mojarro calls it his "ministry": balancing roles as principal of an overcrowded elementary school and leader of a parents group working to improve the school and neighborhood, one of Santa Ana's poorest. He is principal at Kennedy Elementary School on East McFadden Avenue, across the street from the Minnie Street apartments, which are among the most densely populated in Orange County. Mojarro, who lives in Tustin, is also president of the Cornerstone Village Neighborhood Assn.

Plans to build a state-of-the-art elementary school in Santa Ana have a group of residents from some of the city's most exclusive and historic neighborhoods vowing to stop what they see as an encroachment on their way of life. "It will destroy the ambience of the neighborhood," said Bill Eldridge, 57, a resident of Fisher Park, just south of the planned Lorin Griset Elementary School. "This is the best and one of the few remaining good neighborhoods in the city."

When a Mexican government official presented his country's textbooks to Santa Ana earlier this year, parents and officials in the predominantly Latino school district received them gratefully. The books are considered a birthright and symbol of national pride by the Mexican government, which bans their sale and guarantees one for every child. So some immigrant parents were stunned to find these same textbooks being sold at a book fair at Villa Intermediate School in May.

Accountability has become a buzzword in education, with parents and school boards seeking to assign responsibility for teaching students to read and write, add and subtract. Done properly, setting standards and holding teachers and administrators to them are good ideas. Students and those who oversee their education should be told the norms and the rewards or demerits for meeting them or falling short.

A Santa Ana law school stripped its dean of his position Friday after investigating charges that he had plagiarized from two publications for an article in the school's law review. Yet to be decided is whether Trinity Law School will attempt to remove him as a tenured faculty member. Winston L.