Year-Round School Changes the Tune of ‘Summertime’

In the Westside, San Fernando Valley and South Bay portions of the Los Angeles city school district, where the traditional two-semester system prevails, the prospect of year-round school rankles a lot of parents.

“It would be absolutely a crime for kids to have to miss out on so many of the advantages that can only be afforded during the summer,” said a Canoga Park parent about a proposal now before the Los Angeles school board to operate the district’s 618 schools year-round. The plan would be one means of coping with an imminent enrollment explosion.

“What do you do about the kid who needs to work or wants to work to afford the frills? And what about the camping experiences that are only available in the summer? I remember my summer vacations,” she said, “and I think it’s awful” to consider taking them away.

But in the Southeast area of the district, which encompasses Cudahy, Bell, Huntington Park, Maywood and South Gate, overcrowding caused most schools to switch to year-round operation at least five years ago; a few Southeast schools went year-round 6 to 11 years ago. Have students there sacrificed any traditional summertime activities? Or has the outside world of jobs and camp adapted to their schedule?

Made Adjustments

The response has been encouraging in some respects and non-existent in others.

Traditional youth employers, such as fast-food franchises and other businesses that hire temporary workers, seem to have made the adjustment with no problem. According to high school work-experience counselors, teen-agers are able to find jobs during their “off-track” or vacation periods, whether their breaks fall in winter, spring, summer or autumn.

However, operators of summer camps and academic enrichment programs at local colleges have been slower to recognize the needs of year-round youngsters. And other providers of summer activities, such as parks and recreation departments and public libraries, have made some changes in their services but are hampered by staffing problems and slender budgets.

When year-round school was first introduced in Southeast communities, it met stiff resistance from parents. But school board member Larry Gonzalez, who represents East Los Angeles and most of the Southeast region of the district, said, “Parents have adapted well.” According to school officials, few parents request track changes to accommodate a family vacation.

The main problems are caused by local municipalities that still gear up for youth activities primarily in the summer, Gonzalez said. The recreation department in the city of Maywood, for example, maintains longer park hours from June to September than in other months.

But Gonzalez and other board members said it would be worthwhile for public parks and other purveyors of children’s services to change their schedules if the entire district is placed on year-round operation. Los Angeles is seriously considering the switch primarily because the district is expecting 70,000 additional students over the next five years, a number that would require classroom space equivalent to 55 new schools. However, by using existing campuses all year long, the district would gain space without having to build those schools. Furthermore, like school officials in other districts that have adopted the year-round system, Los Angeles board members are attracted by the potential educational benefits, such as shorter vacations.

Students Divided

District officials are studying several year-round calendars. But, in general, the year-round concept involves dividing students into different groups or “tracks” that take vacations at different times of the year, instead of everyone getting the same three-month summer break.

In most Southeast-area schools, the student body is divided into three groups, each spending two four-month periods in class and two two-month periods on vacation. One group is off in summer and late winter, the second in fall and spring, and the third in early winter and late spring.

From a job-hunting standpoint, the staggered vacations have benefited both teen-agers and their employers.

“In a regular school situation, there’s an abundance of kids looking for jobs in the summer. There are more students than there are jobs,” South Gate High School Principal Philip Breskin observed. “But in a year-round school, only one-third of the students are out at summertime. They are able to obtain a job. . . . For both our kids and employers, (year round) seems a lot better” than the traditional schedule.

Jerry Turner, who owns Wilburn’s Discount Party Center in South Gate, has employed many South Gate students and likes the year-round arrangement.

“Summertime is a slow time for many businesses, but that’s when kids are normally available,” he said. “The fact that you can have people available on a part-time basis throughout the year is good. Here we can pick up one group of kids on one track and, when they go back to school, get another set of kids. When we get to a major holiday, we can have them all work. We end up with a bank of trained people.”

Boss ‘Understands’

South Gate junior Arturo Garcia has worked in the stockroom at the party supply store for a year, working after-school hours when he was “on track” and a regular day shift during his vacation. “I tell my boss when I’m going to be off (school), and he understands. He makes it work out for me,” he said.

One of his co-workers, senior Annie Ruiz, likes the year-round system because she believes it gives her an advantage in the job market over other teen-agers. “I go off track two months before Christmas. No one is looking for jobs now. So I’m ahead” of the rush, she said.

Leon Nayson, a work experience counselor at Huntington Park High School, said fast-food outlets in particular have warmed up to the year-round calendar. “They can schedule kids during the day hours when kids in regular school are not available to work,” he said. “There are loads of kids who can work after 3, but not so many who can work 10 to 1.”

The only obstacle some year-round students have encountered has been in trying to obtain federally subsidized summer jobs, Nayson said. Funding for those jobs, authorized by the Job Training Partnership Act, must be spent in the summer. School officials say that if the entire district goes year-round they will seek changes in the federal guidelines to allow the money to be used at other times of the year.

At Southeast libraries, the year-round system has meant rejuggling the schedules of some programs and, when possible, enlarging library staffs. At the county library in Bell, for example, head librarian Kathleen Grant recently hired a second full-time librarian and last year started keeping the library open three nights instead of two.

Like other libraries in the area, the Bell branch also moved its summer reading program--a few hours of organized activity geared to a particular theme--to late afternoon so that both off-track and on-track students could participate.

Programs Shifted

Few park programs have been tailored to accommodate the year-round calendar. However, in the city of South Gate the recreation department shifted some programs, such as basketball and tennis clinics, to after-school hours so that more children could participate. Some sports, such as baseball, are offered in the winter as well as the summer.

South Gate also expanded its summer day camp program to off-track periods last year. The program, held at South Gate Park, offers crafts, games, swimming and field trips from noon to 4 p.m. three days a week, recreation supervisor Naomi Nixon said. Although the summer day camp attracts about 60 children, Nixon said the off-track camp has been less successful, averaging about 40 children in each three-week session. But Nixon said she is committed to the new program because it helps working parents for whom “the off-track vacation creates a real problem.”

But at Maywood’s Pixley Park, the emphasis is still on summer activities. The office where athletic gear is stored opens at 10 a.m. during the summer, for example, but not until 2 p.m. the rest of the year. The reason, community services spokesman Vic Heintzman said, is that the recreation department hires college students to be recreation supervisors, and they are available to work mostly in the summer.

School board members say that if all 618 schools in the district go to a year-round system, so will parks and other organizations that cater to children. “The private sector and governmental entities will have to change the way they do business,” board member Gonzalez said.

But some say it may not be feasible.

Private vacation camps, for example, also rely heavily on college-student labor. Camp operators cite that reliance as a major reason they cannot offer their programs year-round, said Shirley Walch, executive director of the American Camping Assn. of Southern California. “The alternative would be to hire a professional camp staff,” she said, “and the salaries that could attract a professional staff would be prohibitive.”

Rent Facilities

Additionally, Walch said, many camp operators rent facilities that are available only in the summer. Many summer sports camps, for example, rent dormitories and athletic facilities at colleges and universities.

Summer academic enrichment programs offered by local colleges have the same difficulty. “Schedule conflicts are a real problem” for year-round students who want to attend summer school at a community college or enroll in a special honors program, said Joan Ramsey, a college adviser at Huntington Park High School. “Most college enrichment programs and summer schools start between the 20th and the 24th of June, when most of our kids are still in class. They (program sponsors) are just beginning to realize the constraints their schedule puts on us.”

However, at least one program aimed at outstanding high school scholars is contemplating changing its starting date to give more students the opportunity to participate. According to Richard Fliegel, director of the USC Summer Honors Program, about a third of the students who are chosen each year come from Los Angeles city schools. Some year-round students from the Southeast area have been able to participate in the program by requesting a track change at their school so they had the summer free.

“If the district goes year-round and there is a scheduling problem, we will probably adjust the date to accommodate those students,” Fliegel said. “We would not do anything that would rule out a large and important block of students in the area.”

The YMCA of Los Angeles also is studying the year-round concept to determine what changes would be necessary in order to serve students year-round. The Southeast Rio Vista YMCA in Huntington Park already runs a year-round day camp for grade-school children.

But the vacation camps that the organization operates in the San Bernardino Mountains run only in the summer, said Melinda Sprague, vice president of program development for the Los Angeles YMCA’s 24 metropolitan branches. If the Los Angeles school board decided to place the entire district on a year-round system, Sprague said, it would have a “dramatic” effect on the YMCA.

“It’s possible our programming can gear up for a year-round approach,” she said. “Part of the question we have is what the year-round school will look like.”

That question will be settled by the school board when it votes on the issue in December.