A Glimmer of Hope for Escondido’s Overcrowded Schools

One way to deal with overcrowding in Escondido’s elementary schools while preserving the traditional nine-month school year and avoiding year-round schools emerged at a workshop Monday night.

The proposal by Robert Fisher, superintendent of the Escondido Union School District, calls for sixth-graders to be transferred to the district’s three middle schools, which currently handle seventh- and eighth-graders.

About 21 portable classrooms now used at elementary schools would be relocated to the three middle schools for the sixth-graders, and the student enrollment at each middle school would increase from around 700 currently to a maximum of 1,400 students.

In addition, three or more “partner schools” made up of movable classrooms would be established at elementary schools, sharing the same campuses and some common facilities but operating with their own staffs and on slightly different schedules. Such “partner schools” would be used for 10 years or less, by which time new, permanent schools would have been built.

Fisher said his plan is both affordable and workable and avoids the need for either year-around schools or double-sessions, two options that have not been favorably received among Escondido parents.

School trustees decided to study the concept further but indicated Monday night that they favored Fisher’s plan over the alternatives considered so far.

“It appears the bleak horizon has a little bit of sunshine on it,” Trustee Barry Baker said.

Sid Hollins, president of the school board, called the proposal a “stop-gap measure” until the district is able to afford new, permanent schools to handle Escondido’s explosive growth, which has jammed existing schools to overflowing.

More than 10% of the district’s students are taught in trailer classrooms, and the district expects the number of new students to increase at a far faster rate than the district’s ability to build new schools for the foreseeable future.

Fisher said that transferring the district’s 1,160 sixth-graders next fall to the middle schools would free room on the elementary school campuses to handle the number of additional first- through fifth-graders that the district expects during the 1987-88 school year.

Then, during the 1988-89 school year, the district would lease enough portable classrooms to establish three “partner schools” adjacent to existing elementary schools. The schools would have their own names, staffs and administrations. But in order to more effectively share such common facilities as the cafeteria, restrooms, libraries and playground, the newer school would begin and end its day one hour later than the permanent school, thereby staggering the demand on shared facilities.

The district already has one such arrangement, where the permanent North Broadway Elementary School shares its campus with Rincon Elementary School--the district’s newest--on a temporary basis until Rincon’s permanent buildings are completed late this year.

“I had no idea it could work as well as it does,” Rincon’s principal, Ron Guiles, told the trustees at the workshop.

Fisher noted that some school boundary changes would be inevitable as new partner schools are established, but both he and Hollins said there is no solution without a price.

Trustee Jim Lund was the most skeptical of Fisher’s plan, suggesting instead that the district spend money to build a school at Kit Carson Park in the southern part of Escondido. The new school, he said, would alleviate overcrowding at five other elementary schools in that part of the city.

“We’d be better off to bite the bullet and go build new schools. School boards will thank us 10 or 15 years from now,” Lund said.

“There’s one small problem with that,” Hollins told Lund. “We need $20 million. That’s pie in the sky. We need to deal with the problem now .”

Trustees agreed that the district nonetheless needs to set its sights on permanent, new schools eventually so, as Baker said, “we don’t institutionalize overcrowding” with temporary, partner schools.

The trustees instructed Fisher to return to them with more details on his plan before a final decision is made. But they indicated that, for now, the idea of year-around schools or double sessions is no longer the most likely option.

Until Monday night’s meeting, the trustees had focused their attention on two likely options: converting Central and Miller elementary schools, and perhaps others, to year-around schedules, or the addition of at least 24 additional movable classrooms on elementary campuses to further swell existing school populations.