Schools Adjusting to Age Regrouping Despite Early Snags

When the Los Angeles school district tried to boost sagging enrollment at some West Valley high schools last fall by moving ninth-graders to high school and sixth-graders to junior high, some of the resulting chaos was expected. Some was not.

For example, at junior highs, staff members anticipated that sixth-graders, anxious about changing classrooms during six-minute breaks, would run through hallways. So teachers became hall monitors to slow the speeding youngsters.

And, at some high schools, extra lunch-time patrols and organized sports activities calmed unruly ninth-graders, who were not used to some of the freedoms accorded high school students.

Enrollment Crush

But when hundreds of private school students unexpectedly enrolled at West Valley public school campuses last fall, creating an enrollment crush when added to the new ninth-graders, it took some fancy administrative footwork to provide books, desks and teachers for the new high school students.

Now, with a semester of experience under their belts, principals, counselors, district administrators and parents involved in the grade shuffle say the district’s “reconfiguration” program is a qualified success.

The 49 reconfigured Valley schools are the first large group of Los Angeles city schools to shift grade configurations for reasons other than desegregation. District officials say the experiences at these campuses will be studied in an attempt to determine whether more schools should be grouped in the patterns of kindergarten through fifth grade, sixth through eighth grade, and ninth through 12th grade.

Differing Effects

Reconfiguration has been felt differently at the three school levels. At the elementary schools, educators say, the loss of sixth-graders hasn’t made much difference. In fact, some of the principals at the 37 elementary schools involved have found that the new grouping creates a more placid atmosphere in the classroom and on the playground.

At the six reconfigured high schools, the extra students have allowed principals to add electives such as German, photography and advanced music, language and industrial arts classes to their curricula. Some West Valley high schools haven’t had such a wide variety of course offerings since 1978, before the passage of Proposition 13.

The six junior highs have had the most difficulty. Traditionally considered secondary schools, they have had to make modifications in their academic program to accommodate the sixth-graders, who are still considered elementary students.

These modifications caused problems for some teachers who held only secondary-education teaching credentials and therefore could not teach elementary students. Educators also blame reconfiguration, in part, for the gutting of elective programs at some West Valley junior highs.

Here is a look at the patterns of campus life that have developed:

Elementary Schools

“Sixth-grade-itis” used to break out when spring weather arrived at Woodlake Elementary School in Woodland Hills.

“The boys would chase the girls around the playground and the kids would get wiggly during class,” said Don Foster, Woodlake principal.

“The restlessness of the sixth-graders at the latter part of the year was always a problem,” agreed Kenneth Fields, principal of Canoga Park’s Welby Way Elementary School. “At the end of the year, most sixth-grade teachers are just holding down the fort.”

At the reconfigured elementary schools, sixth-grade-itis has been eradicated. Although the fifth-graders have become the oldest students on the primary school campuses and therefore the “kings of the playgrounds,” faculty and administrators say that the 10-year-olds have not taken on some of the less likable attributes of sixth-graders.

Improved Discipline

“I find it much easier to administrate without the older kids,” Fields said. “I have more time to devote to the little kids. There is less stress and fewer discipline problems.”

The enrollment changes may begin to cause problems next fall, when many of the reconfigured elementary schools will receive less money from the state because of lower enrollments. State aid is based on a school’s enrollment during the previous year.

That reduction could translate into fewer “enrichment” programs such as computer labs and art and music classes. At some schools, it could also reduce the number of teachers’ aides.

“We may have to cut a few teachers’ aides, but with a lower enrollment, we may be able to live with less,” said Carol Carlson, principal of Stagg Street School in Van Nuys.

Recruitment Campaign

Conscious of the link between enrollment and money, Woodlake principal Foster last year began a personal recruitment campaign to get neighborhood parents with children enrolled in private schools to enroll their children in Woodlake.

“We had about 100 students enroll . . . so we probably won’t have problems with a loss of state funding,” Foster said.

Last year, to ease the fears of departing fifth- and sixth-graders and their parents, the junior highs initiated spring and late-summer orientation tours. These programs will probably become permanent fixtures at the reconfigured elementary schools.

“The sixth-graders’ parents were worried about the big kids picking on the little kids,” said Edward Moreno, principal at Sutter Junior High in Canoga Park. “I knew that wouldn’t happen because the big kids (ninth-graders) wouldn’t be here. We haven’t had the problems that the parents were worried about.”

Junior High Schools

When reconfiguration is mentioned to Martin King, principal of Portola Junior High in Tarzana, he recalls the day he saw a small sixth-grader spinning the tumbler of his upper-level locker while balancing on the shoulders of another sixth-grader.

To Charles Welsh, principal of Hale Junior High in Woodland Hills, the first thought is auto traffic. Still somewhat overprotective of their sixth-graders, parents who don’t want their children to walk home from school have been clogging the streets around the campus every afternoon.

Carolyn Baker, principal at Mulholland Junior High in Van Nuys, describes reconfiguration in terms of a crowded cafeteria. Many junior high students exert their independence by eating only a burrito or a bag of chips for lunch, so the Mulholland cafeteria crew was caught off-guard when hundreds of sixth-graders lined up and ordered hot, well-balanced lunches.

Those are the kind of adventures that reconfiguration, along with the additional students who transferred from private schools, has caused on junior high school campuses.

Petty Squabbles

Although educators say that it is physically more natural to group sixth- through eighth-graders, sixth-graders are generally less mature. As a result, counselors report seeing more petty squabbles, more hallway encounters and more tears about lunchtime. The sixth-graders also have a shorter attention span. Teachers report that the younger students “get squirrelly” and restless near the end of the school day.

The loss of ninth-graders has had its positive side. There is less cigarette smoking and less drug experimentation. The schools are quieter and there have been fewer discipline problems, administrators report.

The greatest change, though, has been the modification of the academic program.

Because Los Angeles school district junior highs have always been geared toward secondary students, some academic and extracurricular programs have yet to be reformulated to accommodate elementary students.

“Teachers have had to realize that these are not just little ninth-graders. They have had to adjust their program to reflect that these are little people who can not be expected to do the same work as older students,” said Sutter principal Moreno. “So, let’s say, a graphics art teacher would have to assign students only eight projects to complete during a course instead of 12 projects.”

Because district officials believed it would be better to have the sixth-graders change classes less frequently than their upper-grade counterparts, a core curriculum was developed.

Core classes are two- or three-period classes that have one instructor teaching two or more subjects. For example, a core class may consist of an English-reading sequence, a math-science-health sequence or a math-social studies combination.

The core concept created several problems. Because many of the teachers at the reconfigured junior highs did not have the proper credentials to teach sixth-graders or to teach multiple subjects, many had to obtain last-minute emergency credentials in order to teach the core classes. Others had to have their credentials reviewed and changed in order to meet state teaching requirements.

Teachers’ Fears

Besides, some social-studies teachers were reluctant to tackle teaching math, and some math teachers had fears about adding science and health courses to their repertoire, administrators said.

A meeting of officials in reconfigured junior highs in Region E, which coordinates activities for all of the elementary and junior high schools south of Roscoe Boulevard, led to some changes in the sixth-grade core program.

The English-reading core was retained. However, the schools were allowed to dismantle the math-science-health and the math-social studies sequences if they desired, and teachers were allowed to return to teaching just their specialty, said Paul Schwartz, Region E administrator.

“Some of the sixth-graders may be changing classrooms more often now, but that’s what they wanted. The kids complained that they were in junior high, but weren’t being treated as ‘regular junior high people,’ ” Schwartz said.

Adjustment for Time

A number of former elementary-school teachers followed the sixth-graders to the junior highs to teach core classes. These teachers were also assigned to pick up some seventh- and eighth-grade courses, an adjustment they found difficult because their instructional technique was suddenly governed by time.

“When you teach in elementary schools, you don’t have to always teach in a 54-minute bloc. One day math can be 30 minutes, the next day it can be 20 minutes and the following day it could be a whole hour,” said Mulholland’s Baker.

“It’s different on the secondary level. A teacher has to have a 54-minute lesson plan ready for five classes, five days a week. That was a real adjustment for some of the new teachers.”

Reconfiguration and increased academic requirements have decimated many junior high elective departments. The addition of sixth-graders, who for the most part could not enroll in home economics, art, journalism, shop or typing, created a pool of students who did not need these classes.

As a result, schools that last year offered two or three typing courses, an industrial arts class every period and art and music classes are now left with just a skeletal program.

Change in Requirements

In addition, new junior high graduation requirements--an additional semester of social studies and as much as an additional year of English or reading, depending on the academic needs of the student--reduced students’ opportunities to take electives.

The junior high curriculum “has lost much of its richness,” lamented Andy Anderson, principal of Parkman Junior High in Woodland Hills.

A few reconfigured schools have been spared. Mulholland borrows a Birmingham High School music teacher daily to teach two music classes.

After meeting with parents of incoming seventh- and eighth-graders, Sutter principal Moreno decided that the parents wanted a strong elective program.

To accommodate them, Moreno organized his curriculum so that elective teachers took on extra duties of teaching English, math and social studies. But the resulting reduction in class loads of math and social-studies teachers caused many of them to resign.

“It was a sacrifice because I lost many good math and social-studies teachers,” Moreno said. “I’m now in the process of rebuilding those departments, but at least we still have a strong elective program.”

Senior High Schools

The six West Valley high schools involved in reconfiguration have discovered that bigger can be better.

The addition of the ninth grade to the high school campuses has allowed the schools to beef up their course offerings and has brought a new vigor to the students’ extracurricular activities.

Advanced language, math, science, music and art courses that have not been available for years are now commonplace. There has been an increase in interscholastic team membership, and some schools have created their first gymnastic squads.

The crowds at football and basketball games have been at near capacity, a phenomenon that has not occurred in a long time. And additions in the faculty ranks have doubled the size of some departments.

Rise in School Spirit

“The infusion of the ninth-graders and the new faculty have created an enthusiastic atmosphere,” said Lawrence Foster, principal of El Camino High. Enrollment at the Woodland Hills campus grew to 2,801 this year from 2,505 last year.

“Our school spirit has never been higher. We have been able to offer courses we haven’t been able to offer in several years,” he said. “Last year we had only 32 members in our band. This year we have 65 band members. Last year we didn’t have a drill team; this year we have an 85-member drill team.”

Jack Jacobson, principal at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, said: “We had record sales of 1,100 student activity cards. Attendance at games, dances and other school activities is at an all-time high. There’s a real excitement in the air.”

Although the high schools were prepared for the arrival of the ninth-graders, most were not prepared for the arrival of hundreds of private school students. For the first few weeks of the fall semester, there were shortages of all types--books, desks, classes, teachers and lockers.

Space was at a premium. Lunch periods were crowded.

Maturity Gap

“Without a doubt, all the fights that occurred during the first few weeks of school were between ninth-graders,” said Hal Lambert, administrative dean at Taft High School in Woodland Hills, where enrollment jumped to 3,366 this year from 2,261 and the faculty increased to 138 from 98. But by now, “things have calmed down,” Lambert said.

The difference in the maturity level between the 14- and 15-year-old ninth-graders and 17- and 18-year-old 12th-graders was apparent to school officials and worrisome to parents.

“Dating, sex, drugs, alcohol, all the things that send chills up a parent’s spine. That’s all I could think about when I learned that my daughter was going to high school a year ahead of schedule,” Doris Mitchell said about her daughter, who attends Canoga Park High School.

“So far, so good,” Mitchell said. “Maybe I’m a little stricter than other parents, but the fears I had about high school haven’t materialized.”

School officials said the maturity gap was evident at the beginning of the year, when ninth-graders ran through halls, chased each other during lunch and “acted more in a junior high manner.”

But, as the fall semester wore on and the younger students tried to emulate the juniors and the seniors, the maturity gap began to close.

“We probably won’t see the real benefits of reconfiguration until these ninth-graders are in the 11th grade,” said Kay Smith, principal of Cleveland High in Canoga Park. “That’s when the results of taking all college prep courses at one school will start to show. That’s when we will really know how well reconfiguration has worked.”