El Monte Opens 2 Year-Round Schools

Cheryl Mendez dropped off her son, Joseph, at Cortada Elementary School on Tuesday morning. It was his fifth birthday and his first day of kindergarten, milestones important enough to concern any young child.

Joseph was among nearly 700 students who marked the traditional first day of school by roaming the courtyard in search of classrooms and familiar faces. Carrying new notebooks, they rushed to greet and hug teachers. And a few shed tears as they left their parents.

The only thing that wasn’t traditional about the day was that it fell in July rather than September.

“He doesn’t know the difference,” Mendez said. “He’s just excited about school.”

Joseph was also unaware that the year-round schedule that started last week at two schools in the El Monte City School District meant that his mother had to get up at 7 a.m. and forgo beach and park excursions to accommodate his school schedule.

Under the new program, classes at Cortada and Loma elementary schools will run from July to July rather than from September to June. Not counting weekends, students will attend school for 60 days, then go on vacation for 20 days. The school year will consist of three blocks of class work--a total of 180 days--and three vacations.

The program was instituted to combat overcrowding in the schools.

Under the multitrack system used by most year-round schools, students are divided into four groups. At any given time, three groups are in school and one group is on vacation. But for the first year only, the two El Monte district schools will operate under a single-track system, in which everyone attends school and goes on vacation at the same time.

District officials hope that starting with the single-track system will help ease adjustment to the multitrack system.

To ensure continuity for students, the district started the program at Cortada and Loma, which serve students in kindergarten through sixth grade, and plans to expand it next year to Potrero Elementary School, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade facility. All three schools are in the southern part of the district, and Cortada and Loma students go to Potrero for the seventh and eighth grades.

May Reduce Burnout

Administrators say that the system should reduce teacher burnout and that shorter, more frequent breaks should help students learn more.

The plan generated some controversy while it was being developed, but administrators, parents, teachers and students say they are beginning to recognize its merits.

“We really feel that the three months the students are away from school (under the old system) impairs their learning,” said Susan Bierman, assistant superintendent for instruction. “We need to spend four to six weeks reviewing material that they knew in June.”

Teachers at another district school, Mulhall Elementary, in the north central area, like the idea so much that they have petitioned the school board to allow Mulhall to begin a single-track year-round program next July.

School board President Patricia Nichols said the board is considering Mulhall’s request, as well as studying the possibility of using the system elsewhere. She said the study and public hearings required to institute the year-round program take at least a year--a process that has not begun for any other school.

‘Long, Hard Thought’

“The Board of Education is solidly behind the year-round program,” Nichols said. “We gave it a lot of long, hard thought.”

The Mulhall petition, signed by 16 of the school’s 17 teachers, also asks that Mulhall offer enrollment to as many other students in the north central area as it can handle, so that more children can reap the benefits of the program.

“The school districts that have used it have certainly proven that the students have done better, and we thought it was worth a try here,” said Lillian Prince, Mulhall’s principal.

Year-round instruction is common in other districts in the state, especially the Los Angeles Unified School District. But in the San Gabriel Valley, only Duff Elementary School in Rosemead has adopted the system.

The El Monte school board voted to adopt the system more than a year ago, when even portable classrooms could not handle the schools’ rising enrollment. Cortada, built to accommodate 500 children, has 700. Loma, built for 200, has 350.

‘Such Small Areas’

“It’s difficult for us to provide quality instruction when you have such small areas in which to conduct classes,” said Cortada Principal Martha M. Surbida.

The two schools reflect a trend toward growing enrollment in most of the elementary school district, which covers parts of El Monte, South El Monte, Arcadia, Irwindale and Temple City. Since the 1981-82 school year, overall enrollment has increased from 8,500 to 10,500 students, and officials estimate that it will reach 13,000 by 1991.

“The overcrowding gave us the impetus we needed to go year-round, but the real advantage is the educational benefit,” Bierman said.

During the traditional three-month summer vacation, Bierman and other educators said, students forget much of what they learned during the previous year, and study habits are disrupted. This is especially true for children learning English who return home for the summer and speak only their native language, they said.

Although the number of school days in the year will remain constant at 180, Supt. Duane Dishno said students will actually get up to an extra month of instruction because less time will be needed to review earlier work.

One Teacher Resigns

Loma Principal Regina Luke said all but one teacher at Loma had accepted the new system. That teacher resigned because her new schedule would have conflicted with caring for her own children, who attend a traditional school in another city.

During public hearings last year, parents questioned officials about the new program. Most of them were concerned with finding child care and coordinating family vacations under the multitrack system.

Bierman said year-round instruction redistributes the problem of child care rather than worsening it. Next year, she said, when the schools begin multitrack classes, administrators will make every effort to place children from the same family in the same track, as most parents have requested.

She noted, however, that a few parents want their children placed in different tracks, reasoning that if the children’s vacations are staggered, they can spend more time with each child.

“We really want to make this a positive improvement,” said Bierman. “And the best way we can do that is to work with the families.”

Many parents said they are just getting used to the new program but will give it a try because of the educational benefits they believe their children will receive.

“It’s a pain in the neck just getting adjusted to everything,” said Bonnie Taufagaafa after walking her 7-year-old daughter Donna to her second-grade classroom at Cortada. “But I like it so far.”

Continuity Praised

Silvia Gonzalez said she hoped the year-round program would give her 8-year-old daughter Victoria, a fourth-grader at Cortada, a better education.

“I like it because she can study more and she won’t forget what she’s studying,” Gonzalez said.

But Susan Tusing, who also has three children at Cortada, said she may never get used to having her children start school in July.

“I would much rather have the normal school,” Tusing said. “It’s almost like a traditional thing to have the summer off.”

Claudia Ortiz, a Cortada sixth-grader, said it would be hard to come to school when other children are playing.

“I don’t like it when we go to school and the other kids are still on vacation,” said Claudia, 11. “But it will be fun because when we’re on vacation, they’ll be in school.”

Children such as Emma Torres, 10, a fourth-grader at Loma, said they welcomed the chance to get out of the house and back into school.

Friends at School

“It’s boring at home,” she said. “I just watch TV--’I Love Lucy,’ ‘The Price Is Right.’ Here we can play with our friends.”

Cynthia Sandoval, 11, a sixth-grader at Cortada, said the shorter vacations will probably help her improve her grades, especially in math.

“I always forget the 12s in times tables because I don’t study in the summer, I just play,” she said.

Jeanete Shue, a fourth-grade teacher at Loma, said she was surprised by her students’ attitude during the first two days of class.

“I thought they would complain, but they were smiling and ready to go,” said Shue, who has taught at Loma for 15 years. “We didn’t have to reacclimate them back into school.”

Mario Gonzalez, who teaches the second and third grades at Loma, said he was pleased that his students would have shorter breaks, especially those who speak limited or no English.

“In the last couple of days I’ve had a positive feeling about it,” said Gonzalez. “The more they’re around school, the better.”

This is especially true for children who speak a foreign language at home, said Christopher Hunt, principal at Duff Elementary, which this month began its fourth year of multitrack, year-round instruction.

“We have English acquisition like I’ve never seen it before,” said Hunt. “A little guy learning English--during the summer he may as well be back in another country.”

Hunt said he was pleased with the program, except that multiple tracks increase paper work and make it difficult to communicate with his staff.

“A single track to me would be absolutely perfect,” he said.