Administrators Seek Schooling on All-Year Plan

How a year-round high school operates is a mystery to most of the San Fernando Valley parents, school administrators and students who are awaiting the Los Angeles school board’s Dec. 16 vote on whether all schools in the district should someday be placed on a year-round schedule.

Most principals and head counselors at the Valley’s 17 high schools say they are waiting for the board’s decision before making scheduling and staff changes. For now, they are seeking to learn how year-round schools work from administrators who have worked with such systems.

The school board is considering a list of proposals to alleviate overcrowding at many of the district’s schools and prepare for the additional 82,000 students expected to enroll in the Los Angeles Unified School District by 1990.

The conversion of the district’s 618 schools to a year-round calendar is the most controversial part of a 10-point plan to ease overcrowded conditions. By extending the period during which the district’s 572,000 students attend school and always having at least 125,000 pupils on vacation, the district hopes to expand its capacity.

One person Valley educators turn to for answers on how year-round high schools work is Mary Ann Sesma, principal of Bell High School in Bell. Sesma has been an administrator at two of the four district high schools currently operating all year.

In 1981, Bell High divided its students into three groups, with each group attending classes for six eight-week periods. At any one time, a third of the 3,617-member student body is on vacation. The program allowed Bell to expand its capacity by 33%.

Day Begins Earlier

Classes at Bell begin at 7:30 a.m.--earlier than traditional two-semester high schools--and end at 3:45 p.m. Classes begin earlier, Sesma said, because principals of year-round secondary schools decided that it became too confusing to change to an early start during the hot summer months and return to the traditional 8 a.m. start in the fall and winter. Only a handful of Bell’s classrooms are air-conditioned.

The year-round high school day is longer because students go to school fewer days than their counterparts at traditional schools. Bell High students spend 163 days in the classroom, while students in traditional high schools spend 180 days on campus.

Although Bell’s schedule is not one of the year-round calendars being reviewed by the school board, it is similar to the multi-term schedules the panel is studying.

“The first thing a year-round school requires is a high level of organization. You have no down time. Consequently, you have to plan everything,” Sesma said. “On the surface, this looks like any other school--students in the classroom, teaching and learning going on--but once you go behind the scenes, that’s how you can tell the difference.”

For instance, it is difficult to transfer a student to another attendance group so that he moves into a different vacation time.

“It is easier to make a change at mid-year, but it is not encouraged,” said Sesma. “Because each track is supposedly balanced, changes can only be made on a space-available basis.

“The only reason a student would be allowed to change track is because of some family problem or emergency. Reasons such as someone’s friends are on another track or because it might be more convenient for the family’s vacation are not good enough to get a change.”

Scheduling vacationing students for standardized tests such as the California Assessment Program test or the Advanced Placement test is also tricky. The CAP is a state-mandated achievement test that all seniors take. The Scholastic Aptitude Test, the exam most colleges require for admission, presents no problem for year-round high schools because it is given several times a year.

‘Do Everything Twice’

“At a year-round school you have to do everything twice,” said Sesma. A third of the seniors are on scheduled vacations now, so the district negotiated with the state to have those students take the CAP test in January when they return. “It’s no big deal,” she said.

As for the advanced placement examination, students who are on vacation in the spring return to campus for the test. Good results on the AP test can give students college credits before they leave high school.

“With only four high schools on year-round, you work around the existing testing schedules,” Sesma said of the AP test.

The need to juggle vacations and arrange to take important tests is one reason some Valley parents oppose a year-round calendar.

Placement Tests

Harlon Hanson, director of the Advanced Placement Program, a division of the New York-based College Board, did not offer much hope that AP test dates could be added so that Los Angeles district students could take the test. To do so would “come at considerable expense and it’s not something I would drag the nation into unless we believe that there is nothing else we could do,” he said.

If the AP test were given more than once a year, he said, “It would have to be a different test and it would have to be graded differently.

“I’m not dead set against having additional test dates, but it would be something that we would have to explore,” he said, adding that so far no one from the Los Angeles school district has contacted his office about the possibility of adding AP test dates.

College Requirements

Many Valley parents also wonder how students on year-round schedules would fulfill college admission requirements. Before issuing final acceptance, some colleges request applicants to submit mid-year and final senior-year grades.

Colorado’s state university system has grappled with that question for almost a decade. Overcrowding forced the Jefferson County School District, which serves many of Denver’s western suburbs, to convert to a year-round calendar in 1974.

But Randy Miles, coordinator of admission services for the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that students from Jefferson County have had no problems meeting all admission standards.

No Problems

“Admission is conditional on final senior-year grades, but we understand that we won’t get some of the grades until after the student starts school,” Miles said. “We don’t have any special rules for students from Jefferson County and so far there haven’t been any problems.”

Security and truancy are two more concerns many Valley parents raise when discussing the district’s year-round proposals. Because some vacationing students may want to return to campus for special events, extracurricular activities and make-up classes, parents worry that school officials will never know who is authorized to be on campus.

Conversely, parents worry that with part of the student body always on vacation, no one will be able to identify truants.

Bell High has very little problem keeping track of who should be on campus, said Sesma. Each student is given a identification card color-coded according to the student’s attendance group. A student from a vacationing group must explain his presence on campus.

Visitors Scrutinized

If a student on break wants to return to the Bell campus, he must walk through a specific gate, show his pass and sign a sheet. If the student does not have his pass and no one can identify him, he is not allowed in.

“We as adults accept responsibility to carry a driver’s license. We accept the responsibility to have insurance information in our cars. It is a responsibility issue for the students to carry their identification with them,” Sesma said.

But Capt. Robert Gray of the Bell Police Department said that his officers have quite a bit of difficulty with truant Bell students.

“Identifying truants is sometimes difficult,” said Gray. “Theoretically, the kids are supposed to carry their school ID, which is a certain color. In practice, a lot of times the kids don’t have their ID or if they do, they don’t want to show us.”

Gray said that having students on vacation at all times of the year has also contributed to absenteeism because students on breaks encourage friends to take off school to join them.

“We’ve worked very closely with the Los Angeles School District on the problem, and there are thousands of solutions, but we just can’t find one that really works,” Gray said.