Year-Round Schools--Not a Class Act to Some Parents

Inside a chilly auditorium at Hamilton High School on the Westside, 50 parents were watching a videotape about the problem of overcrowding in Los Angeles city schools.

Overcrowding, according to the film, could become “a real-life horror story” unless immediate steps are taken to create 55,000 new classroom seats over the next five years, space equivalent to all the public schools in Long Beach. But, as the videotape points out, the district lacks the time and money to build enough new schools to meet the coming demand.

To many parents in the auditorium and across the sprawling and diverse school district, however, the horrifying prospect as depicted in the videotape is not the overcrowding but the solutions to it that district officials are considering.

In particular, many parents are opposed to the idea of placing all 618 schools in the district on year-round sessions by 1990, the most radical of 15 possible solutions being studied by the school board--and the one that appears to be favored, at least in concept, by a majority of the seven-member decision-making body.

Negative Reactions

The most negative reactions to the year-round proposal have come from parents in the Westside, San Fernando Valley and Harbor areas who cite reasons ranging from interference with family vacations to the lack of air conditioning in schools. Underlying all the opposition is the fact that most schools in those areas are not yet overcrowded. Hamilton, for instance, has room for several hundred more students.

“How would we benefit (from the change)?” asked one parent at the Hamilton meeting.

On the other side of the issue stand the parents of the predominantly minority students in the classroom-short central, southeast and eastern portions of the district, where 93 schools already are operating year-round to alleviate crowding. While they say year-round school is tolerable, they argue that if their children must accept it, so should children elsewhere in the district.

“It is not fair that some have year-round school and some do not,” said Van Lu, the father of two children who attend crowded, year-round Union Avenue School near downtown Los Angeles.

On Thursday, the board will begin to debate the various options, which also include enlarging classes in certain inner-city schools and changing ethnic ratios to permit more students in integrated schools. At 6 p.m. on the same day, in the board’s offices at 450 N. Grand Ave., it will hold the second of two public hearings on possible solutions to overcrowding.

On Dec. 16, the board is expected to forward several suggestions to the district staff, which will be required to devise a plan from them. That plan or plans will be presented to the board for final action in January or February.

If the final plan includes year-round classes for the entire district, it would put an end to the traditional September-to-June school year and the hallowed summer break. That prospect and its possible effect on college credits, child care, summer jobs and summer enrichment opportunities have raised the ire of parents across the district, from Boyle Heights to Pacific Palisades to Canoga Park.

Under a year-round schedule, students would attend school the same number of days as they do in the present two-semester system, but they would be broken up into several groups that would use the campus at different times of the year. School buildings would be used all year instead of closing down for three months in summer.

Under one system the board is seriously considering, the school year would be divided into five nine-week terms with a different group of students on vacation each term.

According to school officials, year-round operation is expensive but not as costly or as time-consuming as building enough new schools to house the 14,000 additional students the district expects to enroll each year for the next five years.

But parents say there are too many uncertainties about year-round school.

The question raised most often is how to keep all the school-age children in one family on the same schedule. When most of the year-round schools started about six years ago, children within the same family often were on different “tracks” or schedules and, consequently, had vacations at different times.

Not Seen as Problem

District officials said that problem will not arise if the entire district is converted to year-round operation because students would be assigned to a track by geographic area or alphabetically by surname, thus preventing families from being split up.

But many parents are so accustomed to planning vacations in the summer that they can foresee nothing but trouble in a year-round system.

“What happens when I take a vacation and my child has to stay in school?” asked Jesus Guzman, whose children attend schools in East Los Angeles that are still on the two-semester system. “It’s a big problem, I think.”

For others, opposition to year-round school comes down to unwillingness to change long-held habits.

“I know there are reasons for (the year-round proposal), and I know something has to be done,” said Catherine Johnson, a parent who attended the Hamilton meeting. “But I like having time off with my children in the summer. I’m accustomed to it, and I don’t want to change.”

Board members who favor the year-round concept tend to shrug off arguments such as Johnson’s.

No Law of Nature

“There are people who believe it’s a law of nature that students go to school from the week after Labor Day to the middle of June,” said Westside board member Alan Gershman who, although he has not made up his mind about the year-round option, said he likes some of its features. “I can understand that it is very unnerving. But some people do take vacations in winter. Some families have been doing it for years.”

There are some questions that district officials will have a harder time resolving, however.

In the San Fernando Valley, where summer temperatures often soar above 100 degrees, one of the major objections to year-round school is the lack of air conditioning in many classrooms. There are 12,500 such classrooms in the district, and, according to staff projections, it would cost close to $300 million to install cooling systems in all of them.

Several board members have said they will support year-round classes for the entire district only if all the schools are air-conditioned first. But because of the expense and a shortage of competent technicians, most of the 93 existing year-round schools still are not completely air-conditioned, including the approximately 40 schools that were first to go year-round five to seven years ago. That record makes many parents skeptical about the district’s ability to air-condition more schools, and they worry about the effect that hot classrooms will have on learning, teaching and school attendance.

“The Valley is 20 degrees hotter than anywhere else,” said Northridge parent Barbara Romey, who has been mobilizing Valley parents against year-round classes. “I don’t think a teacher can teach or a student can learn when it’s 110 degrees.”

Called Unsound

Romey also said that year-round school--and, in particular, the five-term system the board is studying--is educationally unsound.

“A nine-week semester is not long enough for a child to master a subject,” she said. “And if you are stopping and starting five times a year, you’ll be losing a lot of educational time.”

Other parents say that district officials have not fully taken into account the effect a year-round schedule might have on high school students applying to college.

“This is not the grade level to be experimenting with,” said Nicole Glazer of Woodland Hills, who has two children at Taft High School. “My son is in the 12th grade. Thank God he’s graduating soon. But suppose his grades had to be in by February but his term doesn’t end until March? He would be too late for September admission (to college). Or what if he had to take the advanced placement test, which is in May, but he happens to be on a nine-week break or perhaps on the second quarter of the course? There is no way he could compete on an equal basis.”

Parents who fear that the year-round proposal will spell academic disaster have the sympathy of East San Fernando Valley board member Roberta Weintraub, who opposes implementing districtwide any year-round system that has not been tried elsewhere. The five-term model, for instance, has not been used in any other school district, according to district staff.

Untried, Unknown

“One of my main objections has been to instituting a plan that has not been tried anywhere,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I really think year-round school can be a benefit. But how could I possibly begin to sell this if I don’t know what happens?”

Her counterpart in the West Valley, David Armor, also objects to the year-round proposal. But his primary reason for opposing it, he said, is that it is not necessary. He said he will try to persuade his fellow board members to exhaust all the other options available before resorting to year-round classes. Those options, he said, include eliminating the ethnic guidelines that currently restrict the number of students who can attend certain schools, reopening nine closed campuses, renting empty classrooms from neighboring school districts and enlarging classes.

“We have a number of years to go before we get to the point of having to go year-round,” Armor said.

But other board members will differ sharply with Armor when the debate on how to solve the district’s crowding dilemma begins this week.

Hollywood and Central City board member Jackie Goldberg opposed year-round school for years. But now, she said, it is “the best of less than wonderful choices.”

When parents ask him about year-round school, Harbor area board member John Greenwood said he tells them that the district has no other alternative.

“I say we have no choice. If we had the time and the money to build new schools,” he said, “we would. But we don’t.”