Year-Round Good Idea

The Los Angeles school board is scheduled to decide today whether to put as many as 78 more schools on a year-round schedule. The controversial change merits approval.

The new schedule might inconvenience parents who prefer the routine of the September-to-June calendar. It also would keep children and teachers in sweltering classrooms in the summer. But the year-round school calendar, although painful, can increase the capacity of a school by 25% and sometimes by 50%. Such an increase in class-room capacity would relieve overcrowding that is already bad and bound to get worse.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has barely enough room for the current enrollment of 590,000 youngsters. That enrollment--fed by immigration, migration from other states and a baby boom--continues to mushroom at the rate of 12,000 students a year. School officials anticipate an increase of 70,000 students by 1991.

The public schools must guarantee a seat for every child who wants to attend. New schools are the ideal long-term solution, but the complicated process of getting state money for school construction and actually building classrooms can take five years. Eighteen new schools are planned, and 24 campuses are scheduled for expansion in the district, but that combination will only accommodate 22,000 students by 1991.

Portable classrooms, although expensive, provide additional seats, but the units, likened to sardine cans by one board member, also take over space that children need to work off energy on the playground.

Busing is another costly option. The district buses 39,000 youngsters, at a yearly cost of $1,000 per student, to empty seats that are typically in the west San Fernando Valley and on the far Westside. The district can bus a greater number of children from the crowded schools downtown, on the Eastside, in the Wilshire Corridor, in the east Valley and in South Gate, but it would have nothing more tangible than mileage records to show for that money.

Close to 130,000 students attend 93 schools that operate on year-round schedules in the district. The total number of school days and vacation days remain the same as on the traditional calendar, but in multiple academic terms that run for 45, 60 or 90 days and multiple vacations that range from 15 to 42 days. Because groups of students are scheduled for the shorter terms and vacations at different times, more students can use the same classrooms.

More year-round schools would provide great relief for the city’s crowded areas. They would also allow school officials to concentrate on how best to educate youngsters, and to stop worrying so much about where to put them. The Los Angeles school board should approve the year-round plan.