Ex-L.A. School Board Member Predicts Increase in Year-Round Classes, Busing

Suburban areas in the Los Angeles school district can expect year-round schedules and more bused-in students as the giant system accommodates a rapidly growing school population, former Trustee John Greenwood predicts.

In an interview, Greenwood offered his views on a wide range of school issues from the perspective of an outgoing board members who helped lead the Los Angeles district through an eight-year period of upheaval. He relinquished his South Bay and harbor-area seat on the school board last week to political newcomer Warren Furutani, who defeated him for reelection in April.

Communities Have No Choice

Greenwood expressed sympathy for the concerns of suburban communities affected by the district’s overcrowding. But he said neither district leaders nor the various communities have a choice.

“As long as children keep showing up, we have a legal obligation to provide them with the best education possible,” Greenwood said. “Space must be found for them where it exists, even in communities that are not themselves overcrowded.”

Greenwood also said he sees a return to teaching traditional values in public schools. “Children need a set of core values that can help them evaluate the conflicting ideas and cultures to which they are exposed,” he said.

As for his own political fortunes, Greenwood acknowledged that resentment of his support for more busing may have been a factor in voter rejection of his bid for a third term in the April election. “But this is not the end of the road for me,” said the 42-year-old Greenwood. “You learn as much from losing as you do from winning, and I’m learning a lot.”

Returning to Hospital Job

Greenwood said he will return to his job as an administrator at San Pedro Peninsula Hospital, but will be “taking a close look” at any new opportunities to run for public office. His school board district stretched from San Pedro to South Gate and included Wilmington, Lomita, Gardena, Harbor City and Carson.

Viewed as a moderate who sought to unify an often-contentious board, Greenwood began his eight years as a trustee in 1979, the first year of court-ordered busing to achieve racial integration. Busing again became a major issue as a rapidly growing immigrant population pushed enrollment to 590,000 and the district began to bus youngsters, most of them minorities, to fill open seats in outlying schools.

District officials say they will have to find room for 14,000 more students next year and they project a total enrollment of nearly 670,000 by the early 1990s.

New Schools Help

Construction now planned for the next five years, which is already generating resistance from residents who would lose their homes, will help relieve overcrowding. But school officials do not know when the spiraling need for more classroom space will level off. In the interview, Greenwood said the next year or two will be critical in determining the public’s attitudes toward the district’s overcrowding and financial problems.

“The time will come when the school board says to a community, ‘You need to go year-round in your schools,’ and the parents there will stand up and say, ‘Why? Are we overcrowded in San Pedro? Are we overcrowded in Lomita and these other areas?’ And the answer is no. The district is overcrowded, but you have the space and we can create additional seats by putting you on year-round and bringing in bungalows.

“Now that is going to be difficult to sell, because we’re asking these communities to view themselves as part of the larger Los Angeles school district and its problems. And how many people are going to buy that?”

Greenwood said the board has not encountered much public protest so far. He added that “prior to mandatory busing 10 years ago, parents would have said, ‘Go ahead and spend more money on your overcrowded schools, but leave us alone.’ ”

More Tolerant Now

He attributed more tolerant public attitudes to massive changes in school demographics that have left very few campuses, even in suburban areas of the district, with predominantly white populations. Sharing formerly white schools with minorities has become an accepted fact of life, he said.

“In dealing with this, the frustrating thing has been the realization that we have no other choice and we didn’t create the problem in the first place,” Greenwood said. “We weren’t responsible for the immigration laws. These youngsters keep showing up and it’s our duty to educate them.”

Since more busing is inevitable, Greenwood said, the only advice he can offer to suburban parents is to get more involved in their local schools and work to see that the needs of their children are not neglected.

“When these things are done on a massive scale, adequate consideration may not be given to the local situation in some cases,” he said.

Crowding to Continue

Despite construction of new schools, the district’s problems with overcrowding will continue until factors beyond the board’s control, such as building limits to curb population growth, enter the picture. Even if that happens, he said, “it will be a long time before many schools can return to a regular two-semester schedule.”

Saturation of available housing, such as in the South Gate area, may tend to limit population growth, he said. “Everybody there seems to be converting their garages to residences and a lot of the houses have two or more families,” he said. “I don’t see how it is physically possible to cram in any more people.”

Greenwood noted that Los Angeles residents have made a much bigger adjustment to school overcrowding compared to people living in surrounding districts. “If you just live across the street, like in Torrance or Long Beach or Palos Verdes, you don’t have to be involved,” he said. “You may have more schools than you need, but we can’t use them.”

Earlier this year, Greenwood tried to interest the Palos Verdes Peninsula school district in leasing some of its closed campuses to Los Angeles, but found little support for the proposal.

Financing Question

Greenwood said the next year or two also may be crucial in determining the public’s support for increased financial aid for the state’s school system. An indication of the schools’ standing in public opinion may be reflected in the outcome of the current battle between Gov. George Deukmejian and state schools Supt. Bill Honig over more money for education, he said.

Asked why public support for education may be in doubt, Greenwood said he believes that people have grown tired of hearing about problems in the schools.

“In a TV society, there is a feeling that after you discuss a problem for awhile, it should be solved and go away,” he said. Many people also think that lottery income should have taken care of the schools’ financial needs, he said, but that income accounts for only 2% of the funds allocated to education.

Greenwood acknowledged that some parents view the schools as an “enemy camp” where their children pick up a lot of bad attitudes and little in the way of values and knowledge that could help them become productive adults. Hindsight, he said, shows that the “1960s were wrong in letting kids try out anything they wanted and figure out for themselves what was good or bad.”

‘Core Values’ Needed

Now, he said, the pendulum is swinging back to the position that children should be taught a set of “core values.” That position is being reflected increasingly in the textbooks and model curriculums sent down to local schools by state educators, he said.

Greenwood referred approvingly to a recent opinion article in The Times in which Latino journalist-author Richard Rodriguez argued that the primary purpose of education is not to teach diversity, but rather to help students arrive at a common sense of values based on the country’s historical and cultural roots.

“But some good things came out of the ‘60s, too, and I hope they don’t get tossed out with the rest,” he said. “As a society, we have learned greater tolerance for other viewpoints and we have become much better at assimilating a wide variety of cultures and minorities into the mainstream.”

Greenwood said he favors giving teachers a stronger role in setting school priorities and plans “if that role does not interfere with the duty and responsibility of the board and the administration to develop and carry out workable policies that balance many conflicting needs and interests.”

Experiments Expected

He said he expects incoming Supt. Leonard Britton to experiment with new ways of getting teachers more involved in decision-making.

But Greenwood said he has opposed what he called efforts by an aggressive teachers union to achieve a “co-equal” standing with administrators in operating the schools. “Union leaders now feel they can warn board members to give them what the union wants, or they will do to those members what they did to John Greenwood,” he said, referring to the financial and organizational support that the American Federation of Teachers in Los Angeles gave to his opponent in the April campaign.

The growing influence of the union, which withdrew its support from Greenwood after he opposed demands for pay increases, should be “counter-balanced by other groups with legitimate interests in what we do,” Greenwood said.

Recently, he joined with other board members in urging that Los Angeles City Council put a proposition on the ballot calling for limiting campaign contributions to board candidates in the same way that they are limited to council candidates.

Greenwood said he will “really miss being involved in school affairs in the way I have been over these eight years. I loved working on the problems and trying my best to help find solutions that benefitted all the kids.

“But, like I said, this isn’t the end of the road for me. Other opportunities to serve will come along and I’m available.”