All-Year Schools at Issue in Bid to Recall Gershman

A group of parents is circulating recall petitions against Los Angeles school board member Alan Gershman because he voted last month to include year-round classes among the district’s options to ease overcrowding.

Elisabeth S. Haskell, one of five sponsors named on the petition, said her group believes that Gershman’s vote went against the wishes of the “vast majority” of his Westside district constituents.

The Los Angeles Unified School Board on Jan. 6 voted 5 to 2 to study year-round classes as one of 10 options to accommodate an estimated 82,000 new students over the next five years.

Haskell and other recall supporters said they would drop their petition if Gershman votes against the year-round plan when it comes before the school board for a final vote Feb. 24.

Gershman called the group’s claims “false, wrong and misleading.” He said he did not vote in favor of starting year-round classes, only for keeping them as an option.

Haskell, a Mandeville Canyon resident, said 25 members of the group are circulating petitions throughout Gershman’s district, which runs from La Brea Avenue to the ocean and from Mulholland Drive to Los Angeles International Airport.

Wider Issue

“This is not just a Westside issue,” Haskell said. “It is not the Westside kicking up its heels and thumbing its nose at the rest of the district. People are opposed to year-round schedules everywhere. But Alan Gershman was elected by the voters on the Westside and we want him to represent our views.”

The petition, which includes a response by Gershman, was approved by the city clerk Wednesday. It accuses Gershman of betraying his constituents with his year-round school vote and of failing to “adequately foster and develop” other options to overcrowding.

The recall group has four months to gather 46,569 signatures--15% of the registered voters in Gershman’s district. If the signatures are verified by the city clerk’s office, the City Council will schedule a recall election.

“There is still time for him to change,” said Jan Gong of Pacific Palisades, one of the recall organizers. “If we have any indication from Mr. Gershman that he is willing to change, then we will be willing to too.”

Several parents said their decision to seek Gershman’s recall was reinforced by a series of meetings that he sponsored in December. Gershman was collecting public reaction to the options the board was considering to deal with district overcrowding.

Regina Fisher of Mandeville Canyon, another of the petition sponsors, said the meetings left her “feeling very frustrated.”

“No one was listening to us,” she said. “They were so negative. . . . They didn’t give you the feeling that there were other options.”

Gershman said last week that he heard from 2,500 parents before the Jan. 6 vote. He estimated that “probably 99%” opposed the year-round proposal.

Accuracy Doubted

Gershman said he was not certain that the negative response was an accurate measure of the feelings of his district.

“I have no way of knowing whether those 2,500 people are representative of the 300,000 people who vote in my district,” he said.

He said he voted his conscience when he included year-round classes as an option. “It comes down to one conclusion (that) there is no way I could cast a vote that will leave any student without a classroom.”

Gershman said he does not believe the district will go year-round in September and “probably not” in the 1987-88 school year. “But beyond June, 1988, from everything I have looked at, it looks like this school district will be up against it.”