Oak Park High Wins Blue Ribbon : Education: The national award is the second in two years for the small district. An Oxnard school is also cited.

Two Ventura County schools with little in common except an appetite for academic excellence received a highly prized award Thursday honoring top schools around the country.

Officials at the small, affluent Oak Park High School were overjoyed at winning the National Blue Ribbon Award--the second consecutive award for the Oak Park Unified School District. Last year, Oak Hills Elementary School received the award.

E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, which serves a predominantly poor population, also received one of the coveted awards, the first the city has ever won.

Oak Park High School Principal Jeff Chancer was attending a staff meeting at another school when his secretary called with the good news.

He didn’t have to say a word.

“I gave a thumbs-up and everybody exploded,” Chancer said. “Our whole staff has kind of been on edge waiting to hear.”

E.O. Green Principal Deloris Carn was equally delighted. At an early morning celebration assembly, Carn praised students and staff.

“I always knew you were the best,” she said. “Now everyone else will know it too.”

E.O. Green and Oak Park are among 37 junior high and high schools in California and 260 nationwide to win the award for the 1992-93 school year, a spokesman with the U.S. Department of Education said.

Criteria for the award include test scores, curriculum, parental involvement and school leadership. Five other Ventura County schools have received the Blue Ribbon award since the program began in 1982.

In the small Oak Park district, the announcement capped an extraordinary few months.

Two weeks ago, Anthony Knight, principal of Oak Hills Elementary School, headed a delegation to Washington to accept the Blue Ribbon his school was awarded last year.

Officials said the award will help the Oak Park district continue its campaign for change within its schools.

“It validates some of the innovative stuff we’re doing,” school board member Jim Kalember said.

The high school this year abolished traditional 55-minute classes. Classes now last two hours, giving teachers more time to delve into a lesson.

Next year, the school will begin an “academy” for incoming ninth-grade students in an attempt to have teachers and students work more in groups rather than in individual classes.

The high school’s test scores rank at or near the top in Ventura County and it is shooting for a second consecutive year without any dropouts.

The challenges confronting E.O. Green students made their accomplishments even more impressive.

“I don’t think you fully understand how difficult it was to get this award,” Hueneme Elementary School District Supt. Ronald C. Rescigno told E.O. Green students. “You have overcome tremendous odds.”

Student demographics support Rescigno’s claim. More than 56% of E.O. Green’s sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders come from families on welfare, Principal Carn said.

A little more than half of the 960 students are Latino, a third are white and the rest Asian, African-American and American Indian, Carn said.

“Typically when you have this kind of economic difficulty along with this kind of ethnic diversity, you are not going to see a high level of achievement,” Carn said. “We have built the kind of support system that overcomes those obstacles and makes the students want to learn.”

An integrated curriculum and a supportive staff helped students test in the 97th percentile in the California Assessment Program last year, Carn said.

Carn said much of the academic success of the school can be traced to the life skills program, which helps students grapple with questions about gangs, drugs and other concerns.

Blue Ribbon committee member Harold Ellis, who spent two days at the school in April, called it “one of the strongest schools I’ve ever visited.”

Ellis, an administrator in the Detroit public school system, has evaluated more than 70 schools in his seven years on the committee.

“Everybody from the teachers and the principal to the community and the students are very appreciative of the program,” Ellis said. “They have a lot to be proud of.”

Three representatives from each of the winning schools will be invited to Washington in September for a White House awards ceremony and luncheon, a Department of Education spokesman said.