Plan to Ease School Crowding : Doubt Cast on Idea of Shifting 9th-Graders

Removing ninth-graders from seven West San Fernando Valley high schools would not create as much more space for minority students from crowded schools as some members of the Los Angeles school board had hoped, a school consultant said Thursday.

A report by researchers for the Los Angeles Unified School District, presented at a board hearing Thursday, said that removing ninth-graders from the high schools would, indeed, leave room for other students. But Barry Mostovy, a consultant to the district’s school operations division, said not all openings could be filled by minority students because of court-approved ethnic ratios.

The ratios call for predominantly white or integrated schools to keep the school population balanced by having no more than 60% of either white or minority students.

Less Diversity

The report also cautioned that lower enrollment at the high schools could result in less diverse curricula and that high school teachers would have to be transferred to junior high campuses along with the ninth-graders.

Nonetheless, board members said they will continue to consider returning to a 10th-to-12th-grade high school system as they search for ways to relieve crowding without placing the entire school district on a year-round schedule.

“Whether or not returning these schools to their original form will solve all the problems, I don’t know,” said David Armor, the school board member who represents the West Valley. “But, if moving the ninth grades will buy us some time in trying to find a solution to the overcrowding problem, well then, we have to look at the possibilities.”

Year-Round Schedule

The concept of returning 49 Valley schools to their original 6-3-3 grade grouping--six grades in elementary schools and three each in junior and senior highs--from the existing 5-3-4 grade grouping was brought up last week by board member Jackie Goldberg at the weekly hearing on the district’s 10-point proposal to alleviate crowding at some schools. The most controversial part of that program is its plan to put all schools on a year-round schedule.

Two versions of a year-round calendar are under consideration. One is a five-term school year in which students would attend four 45-day quarters and have a 45-day vacation. Students would also have a three-week summer vacation and a two-week winter break.

The other proposed calendar is a four-term school year under which students would attend three 60-day quarters and have one 60-day vacation. That plan also calls for an eight-day winter break and a three-day summer break.

Goldberg said she asked for the investigation into returning to the original grade groupings because she wanted to know if space now being used by ninth-graders could accommodate more students from crowded high schools in the East Valley, East Los Angeles, Hollywood and the southeast part of the district.

After the board’s hearing Thursday, Armor suggested in an interview that one possibility would be to reopen Hughes Junior High School in Woodland Hills as a “ninth-grade center.”

“Ninth-graders from El Camino, Taft, Birmingham and all the schools in that area could go to Hughes,” Armor said. “What we want to prevent is converting all the schools to year-round and then finding out two or three years later that we didn’t need to do it to all of the schools in the district.”

At next week’s hearing, the board is scheduled to discuss the possible reconfiguration of more district schools to the 5-3-4 grade grouping.