Another Technique to Cope With Crowding : Reed Junior High Graduates in Shifts

Graduation ceremonies at Reed Junior High School were held Thursday at 8 a.m.--and at 10 a.m.

And a third time at 11:40 a.m.

Crowding at the North Hollywood school made it impossible for all the graduates, their families and friends to assemble together in the small auditorium, so graduation was done in three shifts.

Reed is one of the many campuses in Los Angeles Unified School District where administrators have been forced to come up with creative ways to cope with crowding, not just on graduation day but year around.

But, although ways can be found to reduce the number of students who are on campus at one time during regular school days, there are fewer options on graduation day.

“Divided graduations are a fact of life we’re going to have to live with as enrollment keeps growing,” said Reed Principal Patricia Joyce.

This year, 16 Los Angeles district junior highs, including Pacoima and Sun Valley, had more than one commencement exercise because of crowding.

Have Fewer Options

Unlike high schools, junior highs usually do not have the option of moving graduation ceremonies to a football field because most junior highs do not have a football stadium, school administrators said.

Joyce said that Reed administrators figured that two to six people would attend the ceremony for each of the 550 graduates. The school’s auditorium will hold only 800.

“We bandied different ideas around on what to do, and the one idea that seemed the most equitable was having three different ceremonies,” Joyce said.

Reed administrators decided to divide the graduating class into thirds alphabetically. Students could get permission to change to one of the other ceremonies if there was a valid reason. For instance, if it was more convenient for a working parent to attend the 8 a.m. ceremony rather than the 11:40 a.m. exercise, the student was allowed to make the change.

“It’s not a perfect plan, but it’s a plan that we thought would work,” Joyce added.

The ceremony ends a year of coping with crowding on the Reed campus.

This year, 1,846 students spilled out of the permanent classrooms built in 1939 into bungalows brought onto the 13-acre to accommodate the exploding student population. Also, students attended school on staggered schedules so that not all of them were on campus at once.

Recently, members of the school advisory council wrote a letter to Kathryn Lee, regional superintendent for the southern part of the San Fernando Valley, with several proposals for increasing classroom space.

The parents asked that bungalows be replaced with a new building to house science and art classrooms. They also asked for the addition of a second story on an existing arcade, extension of the physical education field, a new gymnasium and enlargement of the cafeteria.

Other Schools Worse Off

But, although district officials agreed that Reed is crowded, they said other schools are even worse off. Construction funds will go first to the schools that are suffering even more severe crowding, the officials said.

Recently, Los Angeles school board member Roberta Weintraub, who represents the East San Fernando Valley, recommended that Reed’s advisory council consider placing the school on a year-round schedule to reduce the number of students on campus.

The council grudgingly took the suggestion under advisement, but a review of a year-round calendar will not begin until the start of the 1986-87 school year in September.