All-Year Schools Proposed for L.A. : Plan Would Affect All Campuses in Bid to Handle Exploding Enrollment

Los Angeles school officials proposed Monday that every school in the sprawling district be put on a year-round schedule within five years as a way to cope with surging enrollment.

By 1990, the city school system, the nation’s second-largest, expects to gain 70,000 students, more than the entire enrollment in San Francisco, Oakland or Long Beach.

Even if it had enough money, the district could not build schools fast enough to keep pace with the explosive growth in the neighborhoods near downtown Los Angeles, Supt. Harry Handler told the school board at Monday’s meeting.

Each year, Handler said, “it would take nine new elementary schools, one junior high and one senior high at a cost of $170 million . . . to house the annual increase of 14,000 students.”

Under a year-round operation, more students can be accommodated because one-fourth of the student body is always on vacation.

16 New Schools Planned

The district already has plans for a five-year, $365-million school building program. Even with 16 new schools to be built by 1990, however, the school system must make a series of “dramatic and far-reaching” changes to find space for all the children, Handler said.

In addition to the year-round schedule, Handler also recommended reopening nine closed schools in the West San Fernando Valley, enlarging classes in many inner-city schools and revising controversial integration guidelines.

The plans must be approved by the Board of Education, and none would take effect until next September. The senior high schools would be the first to move to a year-round calendar, with other schools to be phased in by 1990.

Students might attend school three of four quarters each year or go to school for, say, nine weeks on and three weeks off; Handler’s proposal did not specify a particular schedule.

This plan “provides the greatest number of classroom spaces of any proposals and, in some cases, provides considerable advantage to both students and staff,” Handler said.

Students could avoid a long cross-town bus ride, officials said, and teachers could choose to work all year.

Ninety-four of the district’s 618 schools operate all year. Most students attend class for nine weeks and then have three weeks off. At the outset several years ago, most parents and teachers had opposed the year-round schedule, but many now say they like having several short vacations rather than one summer-long break.

Savings for District

The main benefit for the district is the cost savings. Air-conditioning all of the schools will cost about $315 million, officials said, but the cost would still be $500 million less than trying to build enough new schools.

In the past, board members who represent the overcrowded areas have complained that only minority students were forced to go year-round, while students in West Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley followed the traditional pattern.

Although that disparity would end under Handler’s plan, some board members said they are reluctant to expand the year-round operation.

“I want to look at the feasibility of floating a county school construction bond, to be funded through creative financing,” said Eastside board member Larry Gonzalez, who chairs the district’s Building Committee.

“In the 1950s and 1960s, bonds were floated for the construction of schools in West L.A. and in the Valley,” he said. “If we were willing to make a major investment then, I don’t know why we aren’t willing to do it now.”

Under Proposition 13 of 1978, California school districts lost their power to increase property taxes to pay off school bonds. Since then, most districts have relied on state funds to build new schools.

John Greenwood, who represents the Harbor area on the school board, called Handler’s proposal a “reasonable plan.”

“This is the first time we’ve been out ahead on this issue,” he said. “Until now, we’ve been playing catch-up.”

Jackie Goldberg, who represents Hollywood and the Wilshire corridor, was less enthusiastic.

“I have not been a proponent of year-round schools,” she said, “but I have always felt that if it is good enough for children of low-income families, why is it not good enough for the rest of the district?”

The district’s construction program calls for building 16 new schools, most near downtown Los Angeles, and enlarging 24 schools, with all the work paid for with state bond funds. None of these schools is under construction.

The superintendent also suggested several changes in the controversial and complicated rules that grew out of the 1981 desegregation court order.

Predominantly minority schools in Los Angeles have 27 pupils for each teacher, considerably fewer than the district average of 34 pupils for each teacher. Handler proposed Monday that the ratio in the minority schools be raised to 29 to 1, a change that would allow officials to add nearly 21,000 students to those minority schools.

Definition Change

In addition, Handler asked that an “integrated school” be defined as one with up to 70% minority students, up from the current limit of 60%. Under the current rules, Latino students from areas near downtown are bused past “segregated” inner-city schools to distant Valley schools that have at least 40% white children.

School officials say the current immigration rules have become outdated since less than 20% of the district’s 579,000 students are white.

A change in this definition of an integrated school would make available about 13,000 classroom spaces, district officials said. But they cautioned that any change in the integration rules would depend on the NAACP, the civil-rights organization that filed the desegregation case.

Joseph Duff, counsel for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said Monday evening that he could not “make any definitive statement” on Handler’s proposals until “we have had time to sit down and review them.”

“I can say we regard the overcrowding as a very serious problem for minority kids, and we would be glad to talk to them (district officials) about any of these issues,” Duff said.

When the long desegregation battle ended in 1981, enrollment in the Los Angeles district was at a low point of 535,000 students. From 1981 to 1984, the school board, under pressure from minority leaders and state officials, voted to close 22 predominantly white schools, most of them in the west Valley.

Immigration, Baby Boom

But because of heavy immigration from Mexico, Central America and Asia and because of a new baby boom, enrollment in Los Angeles schools began rising sharply in recent years. Based on counts of children already born in the city, district officials project that school enrollment will hit 635,000 by 1990.

The school district already buses more than 55,000 students each day, most of them from the areas southeast of downtown or from the Wilshire corridor, to schools in West Los Angeles or the San Fernando Valley. Even if busing is increased next year, Handler said, the district will not have space for 2,600 students unless changes are made by next September.

“If we don’t do this, we just won’t be able to house the students,” he said.

Board members said they will consider the recommendations in committee meetings, and hope to make decisions on them by December.

Time staff writer Elaine Woo contributed to this article.