Cal State Channel Islands Officials Seek Help in Charting Course

CAMARILLO —  Searching for guidance as they craft a curriculum, Cal State officials gathered educators from across Ventura County on Friday to explore potential academic programs and discuss ways the university can help local schools do better.

Hosting the first meeting of the Cal State Channel Islands Academic Consortium, university officials told more than two dozen superintendents and community college administrators about programs that will soon begin at the Camarillo campus.

They also invited high school districts to join an effort--currently only available at Santa Paula High School but set to expand next fall--to reduce the number of freshmen arriving on Cal State campuses in need of remedial training in math and English.

And they talked about the possibility of the Channel Islands campus housing a program to help local elementary school teachers operating on emergency permits earn full-fledged credentials.

“While we are not yet a campus, we are now putting together the programs that will have a profound effect on our entering classes,” Channel Islands President Handel Evans told the group.

“We invite you to advise us as to your needs,” he said, “and we’ll hope to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

For more than a year, university planners have scoured the county to identify educational needs and develop corresponding academic programs designed to launch the new campus.

But with the inaugural phase of the campus set to open next fall, university officials have kicked the planning process into high gear.

The consortium is designed to boost that effort by identifying areas, such as teacher preparation, where the university can design programs to meet local demands.

“I believe relationships are everything and this is the beginning of the dance,” said Charles Weis, superintendent of the county schools system. “CSU resources are tremendously valuable to us and this is a way we can help create a university we can embrace and feel good about.”

Educators on Friday were not short on ideas.

Weis wondered whether the campus could offer a master’s degree in business administration for educators who deal specifically with school budgets. Supt. Yolanda Benitez, who heads the Rio School District, north of Oxnard, asked about the possibility of bilingual education courses for teachers.

Moorpark Unified School District Supt. Tom Duffy said he would like to see a program that starts identifying and supporting potential teachers as early as high school.

“I’m not terribly impressed with teacher preparation, that’s across the board with all institutions,” Duffy told the CSU planners. “It would seem to me if we started earlier, then we would do a greater service to those students.”

Cal State officials also made a pitch for the university system’s readiness program, launched this fall at Santa Paula High School in an effort to better prepare local high school students for college-level work.

The program is designed to sharpen math and English skills of high school juniors so they can pass basic proficiency exams in both subjects and gain early entry into the university system.

The effort, which draws faculty members from various CSU campuses to tutor the youngsters, is designed to reduce the need for remedial classes for incoming freshmen.

“We’re looking toward our [first] freshman class, and I’m telling you we are not going to do remediation,” Evans told consortium members. “The more we can push this material down into the schools, the better off we will all be.”

Several superintendents expressed interest in the program, including Supt. Jerry Gross of the Conejo Valley Unified School District.

“I think it’s a terrific idea to give them advance warning,” he said. “It will be a great motivator for our students.”