Many families concerned over the quality of education their children would receive at schools filled with poor and often limited-English Latino children have left campuses in their neighborhood for whiter public schools in other parts of town, or private or parochial schools.

But is it really worth the drive?

Consider the case of two 8-year-olds from similar backgrounds. Both are bright and enjoy school, and each has dedicated, caring teachers. One attends second grade at her neighborhood school, while the other is taken to the Hope District each day.

Richelle Villapania attends Harding School on the Westside, a campus where enrollment is falling, partly due to the transfer of white students.

Cody Martinez attends Monte Vista, a National Blue Ribbon school in the Hope District. The campus has a waiting list for new students. Cody's family used to live near Monte Vista but moved into the Harding attendance area when they built a home there. His parents decided to keep their children at Monte Vista.

Richelle nearly aced the state's standardized test in reading and language arts last year, scoring in the 97th and 99th percentiles respectively. She's a hard worker and kindhearted. She was the first to raise her hand to assist a classmate who is in a wheelchair.

Richelle, who is Latino, Filipino and Hawaiian, lives with her mother, older sister and grandparents across the street from Harding. She and her grandmother share a special time each day as they walk to and from the campus.

At school, teacher Carol Schwyzer purposely sits Richelle next to two other top-achieving students. There are no white children. There are two black students.

On a half dozen visits to the class, there was never a parent volunteer in the room. Mrs. Schwyzer said she has an aide for about an hour a day.

Throughout the day, several of Richelle's classmates leave the room to get special help with another teacher in reading and other subjects, which means Mrs. Schwyzer often has fewer than 15 students in the room.

"Despite what some people might think, we can meet all those unique needs," she said. "I think wonderful things can happen in any classroom. It's great if you have a couple of kids who are strong role models with good English skills and an interest in academics."

Mrs. Schwyzer, who has a master's degree in philosophy, offered an example:

"A child might show me his fairy tale and I might say, 'OK, I like this, now can you find any missing periods in your story?' To another student I might say, 'Oh, this is good. Now, would it be even better with a little dialogue in it, or can you add three descriptive words and tell me what the dragon was like?' "

Harding might consider Richelle an example of a success story, but her mother and grandmother worry that she's not getting pushed high enough.

MIKE ELIASON / NEWS-PRESS
Delores Gonzalez walks granddaughter Richelle Villapania to and from Harding School every day.

"There are several Spanish-speaking kids in her class, and I think that takes too much time away from the English-speaking kids," said Richelle's mother, Yolanda Gonzalez, a single mom who works for the city of Santa Barbara. "At back-to-school night they had to say everything twice, in Spanish and English. What makes you think they don't have to do that in class?"

Ms. Gonzalez -- who said her busy life does not allow her time to volunteer with the Harding PTA -- is also worried about social influences and what she describes as peer pressure from some Latinos not to act smart once you hit junior high.

"The children around here don't have after-school care, they're free to wander around and use whatever language they want," said Ms. Gonzalez, who is considering sending Richelle to the private Notre Dame School if she doesn't qualify for Harding's Gifted and Talented Education Program. "And it becomes unpopular to be smart. That's what happened to my older daughter. She used to be GATE. She used to be a leader, now she's a follower."

Jessica Villapania, now an eighth-grader at La Cumbre Middle School, attended a private school in the primary grades and Harding for fourth and fifth grades.

"In sixth-grade, I used to hang out with a certain group and I was getting all A's and B's in GATE classes. In seventh, I just changed, and I was hanging out with a different group, and getting C's and B's," she said. "Now I'm getting it together again."

Jessica said most of the white kids at La Cumbre seem set on going to college. Some of her Latino friends are too, but not as many. While she has friends from all racial groups, Jessica said most white kids are in one clique and Latinos in another.

"I'm not one of those people who just stick with my color," she said, "but a lot of people are."

Richelle's grandmother, Dolores Gonzalez, said she constantly tells her daughter "to get Richelle out of that school and into a private school."

"She would benefit from a more ethnically balanced school," Dolores Gonzalez said. "My own children went to school at Harding. There has been a big change. Now I see it as a 99.9 percent Mexican school. Richelle is so bright and I know she's not getting challenged enough."

Harding Principal Marlyn Nicolas understands their concerns.

"At another school, the other kids are able to converse at her level. She no longer becomes the model because she's like everybody else," she said. "But Richelle's one of those kids who'll do well no matter where she is."

While Harding staff say the school offers an education equal to other area schools, one teacher spoke out during a recent school board meeting about the challenges predominantly minority schools face.

Pamela Steele, a Harding third-grade teacher, reprimanded trustees for not tackling the issue of white flight and for failing to recognize the disadvantages schools like Harding have when it comes to parent support and fund raising.

"They've permitted everyone to transfer to any school they want because they want to keep everybody happy and in the public schools, but they shouldn't be allowing that at the expense of the neighborhood school," Mrs. Steele said. Santa Barbara district policy allows for transfers, as long as there is room at the new school and the parents have a valid reason for the transfer.

"Our parents work two jobs."

Mrs. Steele continued, "They do care, they just can't put in time at the PTA."

At Harding, the PTA is jokingly referred to as the TPA, the Teacher Parent Association, because it's run mostly by teachers.

If parent involvement is any indication of how good a school is, Monte Vista may be among the best.

During numerous visits to the campus over the past several months, there were never fewer than three adults, plus the teacher, in Cody Martinez's classroom. On one visit, the class split into four groups based on academic skill level. Each group rotated among tables headed by teacher Nancy Revlin, an instructional aide, a parent volunteer, and a volunteer from AmeriCorps. One mother, an immigrant from Bulgaria, sat at a different table preparing supplies for an upcoming art project.

Monte Vista PTA President Cristy Pugh said there are many families from Santa Barbara on a waiting list to get into the school, which is 73 percent white. About 200 students transferred into the 1,360-student Hope District last year.

"We're a Blue Ribbon school, we have high test scores and we do have a lot of the extras that other elementaries don't have," she said. "We have choir, band, a dance team, math club, homework club, the student-run garden. We have a districtwide fund-raiser, an auction, that raised $60,000 alone."

Cody's mother, Jody Martinez, said she has nothing against Harding. She's never visited the school. But because the family previously lived in the Monte Vista attendance area before building a home in the Harding neighborhood, they decided to keep their children where they had established friendships.

"This is our neighborhood, we go to school here, we do soccer practices here, and when we go home at night, we're just together as a family," she said, working as an aide on the playground as children lined up for a practice fire drill. "I may have a perfectly wonderful school right under my nose in Harding and I may not be aware of it. But we chose to go with stability."

She conceded it would be nice to know her neighbors more. Sending Cody to Harding wouldn't help -- the neighbors' children attend Monroe School.

Cody said by the time he gets home during the school week it's time for homework, dinner and family.

Cody, who is half Latino and half Anglo, said he doesn't really mind not having friends in the neighborhood, because he has many at school.

"I just like to play with my brother and sister when I come home," he said.

Mrs. Revlin, Cody's teacher, said one of the things that makes Monte Vista so special is the level of parent volunteerism.

There are 18 students in Cody's class, including five who speak a language other than English at home. There is one special education student and she has an aide who shadows her all day.

"Kids don't come in these neat little second-grade packages," Mrs. Revlin said. The five students who are still learning English are grouped together for part of the day with others like them in the Esperanza ("Hope" in Spanish) Lab to work on their English.

Mrs. Revlin said most of the class, including Cody, came to her in second grade already reading fluently.

She said Monte Vista's curriculum in language arts is less rote, less "heavy-duty phonics" than Open Court, the program used by Santa Barbara elementary schools.

"Our program is a balance between phonics instruction and literature," she said. "That's one of the things we really believe in here -- educating the whole child."

While Monte Vista spends about an hour and a half on language arts instruction each day, Santa Barbara elementary schools are required to spend twice that. Teachers at Monte Vista, therefore, have more time in the day to dedicate to other subjects, Mrs. Revlin said.

In December, Cody's class spent an entire week on the second grade's annual Apple Valley Days in which the classroom is turned into an old, one-room schoolhouse. Children wear period attire and learn to make butter and apple sauce. They take on new identities, such as blacksmith or Chinese farmer, to immerse themselves in the lives of immigrant people.

Hope School District Superintendent Les Imel said it's programs like Apple Valley Days that attract families to his schools.

"Parents want that enrichment for their kids," he said. "They hear that in Santa Barbara the emphasis is on pulling the bottom up, on bringing those test scores up, and our parents want more than that. Here, we put equal amounts of energy in the high and low achiever."

Of course, high test scores don't hurt.

"The parents go to the Web and look up test scores and they see that our schools are high. There's also a lot of word of mouth," Mr. Imel said. "The facts are that the kids who do well in school have parents who are well-educated and come from a higher socioeconomic status. That's in all the books."

Back at Harding, Mrs. Schwyzer insists that the school offers much more than heavy-duty phonics. The PTA has raised enough money over the years to continue providing Harding students with creative dance, art and music programs.

"Harding has a culture of caring and loving of children and pride in our school and enjoyment of learning," she said. "I would just tell all of these parents to come here and see it from the inside, not from the outside."

Like many of her colleagues, Mrs. Schwyzer sent her own children through Harding. The school had more white students than today, but they were still a tiny minority.

"I was nervous about it at first. I came in with a small group of parents and I said, 'Well, we'll work together if we have to,'" she said. "Now both my girls are at Berkeley."

Snapshots of the schools

HARDING SCHOOL

* 543 students: 89 percent Latino, 7 percent white, 2 percent black, 2 percent other
* Students still learning English: 61 percent
* Money raised by PTA in 2000: $27,000
* Special field trips: Anacapa Island, local museums, zoo, La Purisima Mission in Lompoc, whale watching, symphony at the Arlington Theatre.
* Number of students per computer: 4.7
* 2000 Academic Performance Index (scale is 1 to 10): Raw ranking: 4; Similar schools ranking: 9

MONTE VISTA SCHOOL

* 488 students: 17 percent Latino, 73 percent white, 5 percent Asian, 2 percent black, 3 percent other
* Students still learning English: 9 percent
* Money raised by PTA in 2000: $70,000
* Special field trips: Whale watching, Channel Islands, Catalina Island Marine Institute for fifth-graders, Astrocamp for sixth-graders.
* Number of students per computer: 12.3
* 2000 Academic Performance Index: Raw ranking: 10; Similar schools ranking: 5

SUNDAY

How did we get here and why should we care?

MONDAY

Not all whites are leaving their neighborhood schools.

TODAY

Comparing the schools: Is it worth the drive?

WEDNESDAY

A family's gain goes far beyond test scores.

THURSDAY

Searching out solutions: How to reverse white flight.

Please let us know what you think about the series. To comment, please write reporter Camilla Cohee at ccohee@newspress.com or P.O. Box 1359,

Santa Barbara, 93102.

Assistant Professor Stuart Sweeney of the UCSB Geography Department assisted the News-Press by using Census 2000 data to determine the number and ethnicity of children living within Santa Barbara elementary school attendance areas.

Children were categorized as either Hispanic or non-Hispanic. Each category was divided into age groups: 0-4, 5-11 and 12-17.

The "non-Hispanic" category includes whites, Asians, blacks, American Indians and other ethnic minorities.

To derive the number of white children, the News-Press docked 5 percent from the "non-Hispanic" numbers. They are, therefore, estimates.

The U.S. Census Bureau uses "Hispanic" to identify the ethnicity of individuals from Spanish-speaking countries. However News-Press style is to use the term "Latino," which refers to Spanish-surnamed people of Mexican, Central American or South American ancestry in the United States.

Citywide, whites make up about 60 percent of the population, Latinos 35 percent. Asians, blacks and other ethnic minorities make up about 5 percent.

The UCSB Geography Department, a leader in the area of geographic information science, has assisted the New-Press on a number of projects.

For more information about the department, log on to: www.geog.ucsb.edu/

For more information on Census 2000, log on to: www.census.gov.

1860s: State Legislature passes law prohibiting "Negroes, Mongolians, and Indians" from attending public schools with white students.

1896: U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy vs. Ferguson legalizes "separate but equal" schools. Separate schools for whites and blacks become a basic rule in Southern society.

1947: Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a decision which ruled that "Mexican schools" were unconstitutional. At the time, most Mexicanhicano children did not attend school with whites.

1954: Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education overturns Plessy vs. Ferguson. The U.S. Supreme Court rules in a unanimous decision that the "separate but equal" clause violates the children's 14th Amendment rights by separating them solely on the basis of their skin color. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivers the court's opinion, stating that "segregated schools are not equal and cannot be made equal, and hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws."

1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends in National Guard troops to Arkansas' Little Rock High School to protect the first black students attending with white students.

1966: Santa Barbara elementary district has 6,129 students, 61 percent of whom are white.

1971: On April 20, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

1972: After years of debate, Santa Barbara schools develop and carry out a desegregation-integration plan. At the time, the elementary district, with 5,528 students, is 55 percent white. Eight of the 13 schools are either heavily white, or heavily Latino. The plan includes busing, closing two schools -- Jefferson and Garfield -- and redrawing attendance boundary lines with ethnic balance in mind. The goal is for all schools to have an ethnic breakdown within 15 percent of the district average.

1974: Protests and racial strife in Boston public schools follow a court-ordered plan to desegregate. White protesters stone buses, shout racial epithets, and hurl eggs at black students.

1972-78: At first, Santa Barbara elementary schools become more ethnically balanced because of the integration plan. Over time, white families start to leave schools in their neighborhood, and the district. By 1978, schools are less integrated than before the integration plan was enacted.

1985-2000: Santa Barbara schools continue to decline in number of white students, while districts in outlying areas increase their white populations.

Today: The Santa Barbara elementary district's nine main campuses contain 5,800 students. The district is 22 percent white and 72 percent Latino. Four of the district's campuses are 90 percent Latino or more. The district enrollment is 2 percent Asian and 2 percent black.