‘Concept 6’ Plan Cited as Better Than Busing, Double Sessions : Parents Call Year-Round School Proposal a Lesser Evil

Christina Amaya, a Maywood mother of three school-age children, has thought a great deal about the plight of the Los Angeles school district, which is rapidly running out of classroom space.

She has had to think about it, because her overcrowded neighborhood schools converted to year-round operation several years ago in order to handle an overflow of students.

Under a year-round system, a school can handle additional students by alternating their vacations so that a portion of the student body is always on a break.

For Amaya, it has meant that her 10-year-old son in Heliotrope Avenue Elementary School has been on a different vacation schedule than her two teen-age daughters who attend Bell High School. As a result, planning a vacation in the Amaya family requires skillful juggling, not always successful.

“It is very, very awkward,” she said.

Nonetheless, Amaya regards year-round school as a lesser evil than the alternatives. Her children could be bused to a distant campus, as thousands of Southeast-area children are. Or they could be on double sessions, an arrangement Southeast schools tried--unsuccessfully--before opting for the year-round approach.

Different Outlook

Thus, Amaya differs from parents in other parts of the district. The mere mention of a school board proposal favoring year-round schools as a districtwide solution to overcrowding has stirred parents’ wrath, especially on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley where most schools are not yet jammed. Believing that year-round school is unnecessary and will disrupt family life and learning, they have railed against the proposal at board hearings, called on a state legislator to intervene in the matter and threatened to recall the five board members who support the year-round concept.

In South Gate, Huntington Park, Cudahy, Maywood and Bell, however, parents like Amaya understand the need. Therefore, they are focused on a different issue: What kind of year-round system will serve their children the best?

To many, the answer is Concept 6, a year-round program that divides the school year into six parts and increases the capacity of a school by 50%. It has been used--with good results, parents say--for five years in the majority of Southeast schools.

But it is uncertain whether that schedule will continue to be used beyond the 1987-88 school year, when special legislation permitting its operation will expire. If the district goes ahead with a year-round plan for the entire district, Concept 6 may be phased out, causing an upheaval that Southeast parents would rather avoid.

Moreover, if the district adopts a year-round program that increases a school’s capacity by a smaller margin than Concept 6, it would force more of their children to be bused to other campuses that have seats to spare.

Heads Committee

“We don’t want that,” said Amaya, who heads her elementary school advisory council.

All Southeast schools have been operating year-round without the traditional summer break for at least five years. Although parents would rather have their children on a September-to-June schedule, they say they have adjusted to and accept the year-round program.

“I like the way it is now,” said Ofelia Hernandez, whose two children attend year-round Middleton Street Elementary School in Huntington Park. “I would like the traditional year better. I hope one day we have that again. But I don’t think that it is going to be possible.”

Many parents, like Amaya, say they prefer year-round school to double or staggered sessions, another alternative the Los Angeles school board is considering and on that is preferred by some year-round-school opponents, such as West San Fernando Valley board member David Armor.

Under this approach, the school day is extended and students are split into two or more groups that start and finish school at different times. In the late 1970s, Southeast schools tried double sessions, with the first shift beginning at 7 a.m. and the second session finishing at 5:30 p.m., but soundly rejected them in favor of the year-round system.

Trouble With Double Sessions

“Heliotrope had double sessions,” Amaya recalled, “and that was hard for all the parents. Some kids had to go to school in the morning and some in the afternoon. It was bad, especially on rainy days or when it got dark early. No one in the community will accept it again.”

Administrators and teachers also disliked it.

“It was horrible,” said Howard Lappin, a vice principal at South Gate High School who was an administrator at Bell High School when double sessions were used. “Kids really got shortchanged. Attendance in the early morning and late afternoon dropped off tremendously, and athletics were extremely difficult (to schedule).”

At Huntington Park High School, Principal Marjorie O’Hanlon said there were “massive absences” in the last two periods of the day, particularly among ninth-graders. Double sessions also created supervision problems. When students assigned to the later shift came to school early or when the sessions overlapped at mid-day, bringing together the entire student body of 3,200 students, “you could hardly move down the halls. That does something psychologically to people,” O’Hanlon said. “Everybody needs space.”

After several months, the Huntington Park faculty was nearly unanimously opposed to double sessions and wanted to try the year-round system. The community was also willing to give it a chance. The same reaction occurred in other Southeast communities, school officials said.

Thus, in 1981, the Concept 6 program was introduced.

Experienced ‘Stability’

As soon as the schools switched to the year-round schedule, “we began to experience some stability,” said Willene Cooper of the Legislative Committee on School Overcrowding, composed of elected officials and community leaders from Southeast-area cities. “Attendance improved and morale made a dramatic turnaround.”

According to Cooper, the committee would like Southeast schools to remain on Concept 6, which operates in 34 schools, 19 of them in the Southeast region, the rest in Northeast Los Angeles and the Hollywood area. The remaining 59 year-round campuses, concentrated in Hollywood, northeast and downtown Los Angeles and the East San Fernando Valley, use one of three other calendars approved by the district.

Concept 6 gives students two 16-week sessions in class and two 8-week vacations. Some elementary schools use a modified version, which has four instruction sessions and four vacations.

Under either approach, the student body is divided into three groups, one of which is on vacation at any given time. Right now, for example, Group A students on the straight Concept 6 program are on vacation, while Groups B and C are in class. When Group A comes back in March, Group B will go on vacation. When Group B returns in May, Group C will begin its break.

Each group receives 163 days of schooling, 17 fewer days than the state-mandated minimum of 180. Concept 6 schools compensate by adding about 30 minutes to the school day, which allows students to receive the same amount of instruction as they would in a traditional school.

1988 Expiration

The district was allowed to lengthen the school day in Concept 6 schools through special legislation passed in 1981. However, that legislation expires on June 30, 1988, and it is uncertain whether the district will press for it to be extended. Some board members do not like the fact that Concept 6 shortens the school year and that it affects primarily minority youngsters. The 93 district schools on year-round schedules tend to be in predominantly minority communities.

“Concept 6 is not an equitable situation,” South-Central Los Angeles board member Rita Walters told the board recently. “It is not best for the kids. They are 17 days short of the education children in the rest of the district receive.”

Educators say that the shorter year is the primary drawback of Concept 6. “There is a point at which (the longer day) is not inherently better,” said Principal O’Hanlon of Huntington Park High School. In more rigorous courses, such as high school physics and chemistry, teachers and students “have to really push” to complete the required curriculum, she said.

However, the shortened school year apparently has not caused a decline in student achievement. According to O’Hanlon, test scores have risen at her school over the five years that the Concept 6 calendar has been used. Although she would not attribute the improvement to the year-round program, she said it “obviously has not hurt.”

That conclusion was echoed in a 1984 study conducted by a team of outside evaluators who found that Concept 6 schools performed at the same academic level as traditional schools with a similar socioeconomic background.

New Schedule

But board members appear to favor a reduction of the number of calendars used in the district, possibly with the goal of adopting one uniform schedule if the entire district is placed on year-round operation.

An entirely new schedule that seems to appeal to many district officials is known as the five-term calendar. Under this schedule, students would attend school for four out of five nine-week terms. The rotation of the attendance groups would add 25% to a school’s capacity, district officials said.

Board member John Greenwood, who represents the Harbor area and part of the Southeast, said that “intellectually” he prefers the five-term schedule. But he supports the continued use of Concept 6 in the Southeast area for the same reasons that Southeast parents do.

“If you suddenly said to Concept 6 schools that you have to go on a different schedule, you would have chaos and you have to put more kids on the bus,” he said at a recent board meeting. “It would cause a substantial problem for those children to be disrupted.”

Because the five-term schedule increases the use of a school by only 25%, compared to 50% on the Concept 6 program, many students who are able to attend their neighborhood schools now would have to be bused to other campuses. At South Gate and Huntington Park high schools alone, administrators estimate that 1,200 more students would be bused out. The two campuses already divert that many students to other schools, mostly in the San Fernando Valley.

“Parents don’t want that,” said Ofelia Hernandez, the Middleton Street Elementary School parent. “We can live with the other problems,” she said, referring to the juggling of vacation schedules, “but not with busing more kids away from home.”

Provision Dropped

At a meeting on Jan. 6, the board voted 5 to 2, with Walters and Hollywood and Central City representative Jackie Goldberg opposing, to drop a provision that would have effectively forced Concept 6 schools to switch to a new districtwide calendar by mid-1988.

Southeast parents wanted the deadline dropped to allow time for the completion of new classrooms planned in the Southeast area. They hope that the additional children who would have to board buses under the proposed new calendar will be able to take advantage of new facilities in the neighborhood instead. The district already is behind in its construction schedule, however, and may not have the luxury of waiting for the buildings to be finished.

Parents also hope the district will push for an extension of the Concept 6 legislation. But the resolution of that issue is as uncertain as the larger question of whether the board will prescribe year-round school for the entire district, a decision it is expected to make next month.