U.S. HONOR BESTOWED ON SCHOOL; T.O. ELEMENTARY WINS BLUE RIBBON FROM DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

The outdoor life laboratory at Meadows Elementary School is a symbol of the approach to education that brought the school a coveted National Blue Ribbon award from the U.S. Department of Education.

With its plant life representing all four regions of the state - coastal, mountain, desert and central valley - and fast growing trees forming a rain forest complete with pond and animals, the garden is one of many educational tools the school has developed to spark the pupils' intellectual interest.

``Instead of reading about a pond, we want to give kids a being-there experience,'' said Principal Tim Stephens. ``Books are one way to get information. The way you connect kids with learning is to give them a real life experience.''

It's been more than two weeks since the announcement that Meadows had received the award, making it the first school in the Conejo Valley Unified School District to ever win it and the only one in Ventura County to get it this year.

But Stephens, principal of the school since 1983, is still walking on air over the honor.

``This is kind of like getting the Academy Awards for schools,'' he said.

The school will celebrate its award today with a schoolwide event that will include demonstrations of student learning, music and the release of 40 white doves (white is the school's color). It will be attended by a host of local dignitaries, he said.

And sometime in September a delegation of staff, administrators and parents from the school will go to Washington, D.C., where they will receive the National Blue Ribbon plaque from President Clinton at the White House.

``That's kind of special,'' Stephens said.

District Superintendent Jerry Gross could only think of one word to describe how Meadows' award felt, especially given that it was one of only 34 winners out of the state's 5,000 or so elementary schools.

``It's awesome,'' he said.

Meadows was one of three Conejo Valley area schools nominated for the award. Others were Wildwood elementary, also in the Conejo school district, and Yerba Buena elementary in Agoura Hills.

The U.S. Department of Education sends site visitors to each nominated school to verify the information on the nomination applications. For Meadows, that representative was Judy Evans, an elementary school principal from Billings, Mont., who was principal of Ponderosa elementary in that city when it won in 1990.

She is now principal of Highland Elementary School in Billings.

Since her former school's win, Evans has been the site visitor for the Department of Education National Blue Ribbon program four times, and this year visited three schools as part of the awards process.

She does not recommend a school for the award, but only ensures that the information in the application provides a true picture of the school.

What she found at Meadows was this: constant development and restructuring of the curriculum; extensive writing and reading of books that were particularly pertinent to what the pupils were learning; and strong leadership.

Just as important, she found that parents were extremely involved in the school and ``didn't just bake cookies.''

``I was not at all surprised that they got the Blue Ribbon,'' she said.

One pupil benefiting from all this is Jean Parks, daughter of city Councilwoman Linda Parks and president of the Meadows Student Council.

The sixth-grader has been at the school since kindergarten and in that time has seen the school grow and change for the better.

She said she enjoys the environmental lessons and other programs. She was particularly pleased with the opportunity she had in fourth grade to go with a group of other students to Sacramento, where they visited the state Capitol and took part in other activities.

``What was even more fun was we actually earned the trip,'' she said. ``We had to earn it by garage sales and stuff like that. We had to earn it, which made it a lot of fun.''

All in all, it was the staff and parents working together that clinched the award for the school, Stephens said. And despite the award, the work goes on.

``We've been trying to reinvent ourselves the last four years and see ourselves through another lens,'' Stephens said. ``This is certainly validation that we're on the right track, but you never get there - you always want to improve and not rest on your laurels.

``We're higher than a kite - the kids are having a great time with this.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Students at Meadows School experience and learn about plants from four distinct regions of California in the outdoor life lab.

(2) Trish Doerr's fourth-graders and their schoolmates have much to celebrate these days after being named a National Blue Ribbon campus.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News