Busing Expands : Overflow of Pupils Carries to West Valley

The effects of crowded schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District reached into new territory Wednesday as students were bused to the West San Fernando Valley from as far away as southeast Los Angeles.

For the first time, about a dozen schools in Woodland Hills, Canoga Park, West Hills and Chatsworth began the school year by accepting students from crowded schools elsewhere. Students rode buses for as long as an hour from neighborhoods in the East Valley, Hollywood and the southeastern reaches of the district.

Valley schools, with their sprawling campuses and low, stable enrollments, offer the district space for students from crowded schools, district officials say. Schools in the south Valley and those close to freeways have been acting as receiver schools for several years, as have schools on the Westside.

This year, the district was able to solve its classroom shortage by busing and adding 300 portable classrooms to 89 campuses districtwide. However, even with more busing and more portable classrooms, district officials are unsure whether they can accommodate all the new students next year.

600,000 Students

District officials estimate that 600,000 youngsters will attend Los Angeles schools this year. By 1990, the district expects to enroll 635,000 students. About 590,000 students were enrolled in the 1986-87 school year.

Schools are being built in crowded neighborhoods, but some district officials say the fastest way to expand classroom capacity is to increase the number of schools on a year-round schedule.

Three proposals that could convert nearly 150 Valley schools from a traditional September-to-June calendar to a 12-month schedule were presented to the Los Angeles Board of Education on Monday.

On Wednesday, a variety of approaches to the crowding problem was evident in the Valley.

Morningside Elementary School in San Fernando, which is already operating on a year-round schedule, has limited enrollment to 960. Even so, the school must bus about 150 youngsters to several other Valley campuses.

Some parents in the Morningside area who watched their children climb on the buses Wednesday complained about the early hour they had to get them out of bed. Others said they did not like sending their children out of the neighborhood to attend school.

“I don’t feel really good about this,” Rosetta Dunson said as she waited with her daughter, Lamacha, a first-grader who is being bused to Capistrano Avenue Elementary School in Canoga Park.

“I would rather have her closer to home, some place that is easier to get to from my job,” Dunson said. “But, what are you going to do? We just moved here from Van Nuys, and there is no more room in this school.”

The youngsters from the Morningside neighborhood joined about 14,000 other students who were bused from their crowded campuses throughout the district. About 5,200 of the students have been sent to 87 Valley schools.

Portable Classrooms

Lamacha and about 40 other Morningside students were bused to Capistrano Elementary. This is the first time that Capistrano has received students from a crowded school. To make room for them and for future students, four portable classrooms were placed on the playground.

Because some students from the Morningside area speak little English, Capistrano Principal Petra Montante this summer hired four aides fluent in Spanish and English to work with teachers.

Montante also worked to ease anxieties of parents in Canoga Park and San Fernando about the bus trip and the changes that would occur as the number of limited-English-speaking minority students increases.

“There were some fears at first, but as the parents watched how the faculty and the principal prepared themselves for the arrival of the Morningside kids, the fears have began to ease,” said Lynn Tolbert, president of the Capistrano PTA.