Cleaning Up Is a Lesson in Service : Education: Program at an Oak Park elementary school gives students first-hand knowledge of responsibility.

If President Clinton needs some suggestions for his plan for a national service corps, he could turn to first-grader Matthew Pereyra.

Except that Matthew is currently occupied, yelling “Yech!” as he carries a handful of graham cracker crumbs from a lunchroom table to the garbage.

Or he could interrupt a hockey game between Jacob Zentner and Jonny Ordonez, two of Matthew’s classmates at Oak Hills Elementary School in Oak Park. Jonny is manning a dust-pan goal while Jacob wields a broom in an attempt to score with a peanut-butter cracker.

Or he could chat with Matt Loesing, who is rubbing his platinum hair in fatigue after a tough 10 minutes spent wiping down lunchroom tables.

“I’ve got a splitting headache,” Matt announces.

Call it community service for the monkey-bar set. At Oak Hills, it is an idea that has taken root.

Since March, Oak Hill’s students have been required to give up one recess per month to do work around the campus.

And while community service programs are coming into vogue for high school and college students, Oak Hills Principal Anthony Knight said his is one of the only elementary schools in the nation that asks the same of its youngsters.

Officials of the National Assn. of Elementary School Principals and the Assn. of California School Administrators say they have no reason to disagree with him.

“I’ve heard of student councils doing community service projects, but nothing like this,” said June Million, a spokeswoman for the national group.

Each grade at Oak Hills is given a specific task that is more-or-less pegged to students’ abilities.

Rotating teams of first-graders tidy up the lunchroom after their classmates are finished.

“Sometimes we rag. Sometimes we just sweep,” explained Jonny, the goalie.

Second-graders keep the planters tidy, while third-graders re-shelve library books.

The fourth grade is in charge of washing windows, and the fifth grade handles the lunchroom detail for the second lunch period and takes care of the playground equipment room.

Even the kindergartners have responsibility for cleaning their separate lunch area.

“Children love to clean. They never say no,” said Helene Koperberg, a first-grade teacher whose students are cleaning the lunchroom.

“Of course,” she added: “You don’t find that at home.”

The school service project is another innovation at Oak Hills, which recently won a national Blue Ribbon award, given by the U.S. Department of Education, as one of the best elementary schools in the nation.

Knight said the school service idea is loosely modeled on Japanese schools, which stress teamwork.

“We try to encourage our kids often, in school, to be individualists and to compete among themselves. In Japan, they’re trying to get kids to work as a team,” Knight said. “A lot of people now espouse the opinion that we don’t know how to work together. Here, we’re working together in groups and doing it to help the school.”

In a letter to parents, Knight said the program’s goal is to promote teamwork, a sense of community, selflessness, and commitment to the school.

“It is not an easy and cheap way for us to use your child to get work done at the school that is not being done by paid staff,” he wrote.

The ideals of the school service project are often loftier than the implementation.

“They have good days and bad days,” custodian Linda Gasparini said, surveying the end of a lunchroom detail. “When they have good days, it’s great. When they have bad days, well . . . you can see the result.”

She motioned toward lunchroom tables that looked like south Florida six months after the hurricane. Cleaner, but far from reconstructed.

Although Oak Hills parents have mostly embraced the program, Knight said a few have forbidden their children to participate. He said some were wary about letting their youngsters handle discarded food, while others believed cleaning is the custodian’s job.

“Maybe these are parents who have people clean the house and don’t have to lift a finger,” Knight said.

Next year, he said, parents will not be allowed to excuse their children from participating “just like you cannot excuse your child from math.”

But many of the students said they wouldn’t want to miss out.

Noah Skultety, Taylor Atkins, and two other second-graders scooped dead leaves out of a planter, in which previous classes have planted cycads and other rare plants. Taylor’s fingers barely extended past the palm of the adult-sized gardener’s gloves she wore.

“It’s fun and you can help the environment,” Noah said. “And you can help the school be a better place.”

By learning the ideas of community service early, Knight said his students will be better prepared to accept the responsibilities of Clinton’s proposed national service program.

“It ties in very well. The concept is giving something of yourself to benefit a team,” Knight said. “Whether it’s on a small scale, to benefit a school, or a larger scale to benefit a nation, the idea is the same.”

Rachel Sawyer, one of the students who regularly washes windows at the school, said she has learned to be more self-reliant.

“It teaches us responsibility,” Rachel said. “Instead of our parents cleaning up after us, we can clean up after ourselves.”

Rachel also learned a more subtle lesson about making a program like this succeed.

The window washers don’t have time to do every classroom during their lunch break, she said. But one set of windows is never overlooked.

“We always do Mr. Knight’s window and the office door,” Rachel said. “They’re, like, sparkling clean.”