Stretching the School Year

Huntington Park High School on the southeast border of Los Angeles has about 3,650 students on a campus built for 2,400. It has been severely overcrowded for six years, and it has been on a year-round schedule for nearly five years. And its experience is a case study for the rest of the Los Angeles school district whose policy board will decide this week whether to expand the year-round program.

Change is not always easy, but change the school district must if it is to cope with enrollment increases brought on by rising birth rates and immigration from both Asia and Latin America. Some areas of the city, like Huntington Park, East Los Angeles and the Wilshire corridor, face the impact now; some will face it later. But all neighborhoods--affluent as well as those that are poorer and more crowded--must work together to try to solve a city-wide problem.

Huntington Park High School’s principal, Marjorie O’Hanlon, argues strenuously that the district should not try to make room for its growing student population by extending the school day. Huntington Park did that its first year of severe overcrowding, with one shift of students arriving at 7 a.m. and another staying until 5 p.m. Too many students making too much noise with too little time to eat and too many distractions discourages real learning, she said.

In July, 1981, Huntington Park switched to a year-round schedule. Some students obviously wanted to go to the beach in the summer rather than to school. But O’Hanlon’s staff told the students what was expected of them and they came to school. Yes, the building was hot, said administrative assistant Ruth Ramsaur. “Their homes are hot, too. Our students are not coming to school from homes that are air-conditioned.” Nevertheless, the school board must air-condition as many schools as it can, especially in the San Fernando Valley where temperatures can reach 100 degrees for days on end.

Some students and their families cannot take summer vacations. But brothers and sisters are put on the same schedules so that families can get away together; that kind of scheduling is in the proposal now before the school board. In addition, all schools would be closed for the same three-week period in the summer.

Teachers had problems adjusting to the year-round schedule, too. They prefer a regular classroom but often can’t have the same room from session to session. They worried that more breaks during the year would mean less continuity and that students would forget what they had learned in the last session. It didn’t happen that way.

In short, said Joy Maxwell, a Huntington Park graduate now at Long Beach City College, “After year-round got going for a few years, it didn’t feel like year-round.”

Huntington Park’s absenteeism has gone down under the year-round schedule and test scores have gone up. Last year Huntington Park was awarded $36,000 for significant improvement in reading and math scores through the state assessment program. There is still a high dropout rate--38%--but 28 high schools in Los Angeles have higher rates.

“I’m not saying the year-round program has done it,” said O’Hanlon, “but clearly it hasn’t hurt. The calendar is really irrelevant” in terms of the kind of education offered, she added.

But the calendar is relevant in combatting overcrowding. With that and the lessons of Huntington Park’s adjustment in mind, the Los Angeles school board should get on with its year-round decision. It is the wisest move given the circumstances and one that must be made now so that principals, parents and students can start planning and thinking in new directions.