Imperfect but Necessary

The Los Angeles Unified School District needs more classrooms, but there is neither the time nor the bond money to build enough new schools before the system comes up short.

Fortunately Supt. Harry Handler and a majority of the Los Angeles Board of Education have recognized that year-round schools are a necessary, although imperfect, approach to the exploding enrollment, and that the planning must start now.

The district currently educates 565,000 students under 18. Overcrowding is already a problem in areas near downtown, in East Los Angeles and in the eastern section of the San Fernando Valley. Systemwide overcrowding is expected by 1990 unless the district makes room for an additional 82,000 pupils. If the board approves--as it should--when the final vote is scheduled next month, the year-round calendar could take effect by 1987.

New schools would have better served the expanding enrollment, but in the absence of massive new construction, the educators and parents have been forced to consider unpleasant remedies such as an increase in class size, the reopening of closed schools, a staggered school day and--the most drastic--year-round schools.

Currently 94 schools operate throughout the 12 months, and 100,000 students receive several brief vacations, which are overlapped, so that more students can use the same desks. During the summer, air conditioning is essential, although only half the district’s 25,000 classrooms have it. The school board has voted to make air conditioning a “high priority,” but not a requirement so that planners will have flexibility. But what child can learn and what teacher can teach in an unbearably hot classroom?

Year-round sessions are unpopular, but no one predicted the high birthrate, massive immigration and influx from other areas of the United States that are swelling our schools. It’s too bad, but Handler and the Los Angeles Board of Education have no choice.