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400 to Be Bused to Charnock Road From Inner City : Plans Made for Incoming Pupils

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Times Staff Writer

School board member Alan Gershman met with parents at Charnock Road Elementary School on Tuesday to talk about support for students who will be bused from overcrowded inner-city schools in the fall.

Charnock Road, located in Palms, is one of four schools selected last December by the Los Angeles Board of Education to receive more than 400 children. The other schools are Mar Vista Elementary School, Cowan Avenue Elementary in Westchester and President Avenue in Harbor City.

School Enrollment

The plan will alter the ethnic ratio at each of the four schools from the current standard of 60% minority, 40% white to 70% minority and 30% white.

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Gershman said that Charnock Road will receive an estimated 113 more students the first year. The school’s total enrollment is 358.

Gershman told parents Tuesday that each of the four schools will receive additional money and staff time to develop programs for new students.

Each school, he said, will receive $50 in additional educational funds for each child bused in. The district will also provide each school with $381 for each student speaking limited English. (Charnock Road is expected to receive about 80 students who speak limited English.)

In addition, Gershman said that teachers and administrators will be paid to come back early from their summer vacations to prepare for the new students. The district will also hire a bilingual coordinator for each school and provide foreign language classes for the teachers and administrators.

School officials said that Mar Vista Elementary School will receive 147 additional students.

Many of the parents who sat through the sparsely attended meeting Tuesday night were concerned about the impact the program will have on the quality of education and expressed disappointment with the amount of money being provided by the district.

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Frustration Seen

“We all agreed that the children need to be educated and we certainly want to help and are willing to receive them,” said parent Arlene Felix. “But on the other hand, we didn’t get any answers on how it is going to effect our children.

“It is not going to lower the class size or increase student-teacher time. I don’t see any advantages for the community itself and that leaves you frustrated because we want good education for all the children.”

Gershman said that the parents want to be cooperative. “Their concerns are real but, for the most part, they want it to work,” he said.

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