Furutani Asks New Debate, Vote on School Schedule

Warren Furutani, the crucial swing vote in the Los Angeles school board’s 4-3 decision this week to put the entire district on a year-round calendar by 1989, said Thursday that he will ask the board to vote again on the issue after hearing more public debate.

Furutani said he will make the motion at the board’s meeting Monday. He stressed that he has not changed his mind on the controversial issue, although he said he realizes his move may hearten opponents of the year-round plan.

The board, he said, did not allow enough time for parents and teachers to consider the changed calendar. “I feel, as an individual board member, I made a mistake and the board moved too quickly,” said Furutani, who narrowly won election in April in the 7th District, which runs from Watts to Los Angeles Harbor. “I think we compromised a process. If we don’t correct it, we will compromise a trust. I refused to start my career as a board member on the wrong foot.”

All three board members who voted against the year-round calendar said Thursday that they would support a motion for reconsideration. Officials said a final decision might not take place for at least six months. About a quarter of the district’s 592,000 students are already on that schedule.

Furutani’s statements added confusion to an issue that has attracted national attention for its possible effects on family life, child care, summer jobs, sports and even the tourist trade. The Los Angeles school board, which governs the second-largest public school system in the nation, has never reversed itself on such a major decision.

Roberta Weintraub, one of the three votes against the year-round decision, said she welcomed Furutani’s new position. “I’m really glad he has done some thinking about it. Anything we can do to calm the situation down and get some input is a good thing,” said Weintraub, who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley, where the calendar switch is unpopular.

Westside board member Alan Gershman said he agreed with Furutani that not enough has been heard from the public on the matter.

But asked what would be the impression if the board ultimately decides to revoke its vote, Gershman responded: “The people are going to wonder, ‘Do they know what in the hell they are doing down there?’ ”

Gershman, Weintraub and Julie Korenstein, the other board member who voted against the year-round calendar, are all up for reelection in April.

Years of Discussion

Jackie Goldberg, one of the four board members who voted for the year-round plan, said she did not believe that the board acted in haste when it voted Monday. “We’ve been discussing this for five years, and certainly for the last three and a half years, very intensely.”

Goldberg said the reconsideration would appear as if the board were buckling to pressure from the parents, particularly on the Westside and in the Valley.

“The message this will send is that if people shout enough and make enough noise, those people in affluent areas of the district . . . are more apt to get what they want” than other people, she said.

Furutani, a former administrator of a program for Asian students at UCLA and the first person of Asian descent elected to the school board, said protests from parents opposed to the switch contributed to his decision. After the board voted in favor of the switch, there was talk in Furutani’s district of a recall movement against him. Only about 20% of his district is year-round.

Intense Pressure

Weintraub said that the pressures on Furutani were especially strong because he is new. “New board members sometimes find the trauma of initiation very difficult,” she said, adding that she considers his action courageous.

Year-round students attend school the same amount of time as their counterparts in regular-schedule schools, but vacation breaks are interspersed throughout the year instead of being concentrated in the summer.

The board was expected to vote last Monday on one of three proposals to place different categories of schools on year-round calendars. Instead, it came up with a plan affecting every school.

School Conversions

As a first step, the board agreed to convert 14 severely overcrowded elementary schools to year-round operation next year and to place three schools now under construction on the schedule.

In July, 1989, all L.A. city schools would go year-round, with the most crowded ones adopting a so-called multitrack approach in which some students are in school while others are on vacation.

Opponents predict a mass exodus from the district similar to the “white flight” to private schools that followed forced busing in the 1970s.

Supporters say the plan is preferable to busing students to less-crowded schools and has academic advantages because more and shorter vacations prevent teacher burnout and give students less chance to forget what they learn.

Furutani acknowledged that many hearings had been held on changing the school calendar to ease overcrowding. But he said that no public hearing was held specifically on the so-called “item I” on last Monday’s agenda--putting all 618 schools on a year-round schedule in July, 1989.

There had been speculation that Furutani was confused when he voted Monday. But on Thursday, he insisted that he was simply making sure that his vote for the plan would be followed by a vote to create a task force to study school schedules. “I knew what I was voting for,” he said, adding that he wants the study to proceed.

Furutani said there was always a chance that he might change his mind after listening to the public. “I doubt it,” he said. “But if I said to you that my beliefs are etched in stone and let’s just dance around with the public, what would that mean?”

Furutani conceded that he had been avoiding reporters this week as he agonized over his decision.

He said that he supports a switch to a year-round calendar for educational reasons. He described the current calendar as a relic of an old agricultural life style tailored to the harvest season.

“The issue is not overcrowding,” he said. “The issue is uniform calendar, a calendar that is more academically and educationally sound, a calendar in the context of what other leading industrial nations are doing. I want to make sure that the calendar we choose is going to help us compete.”

No Additional Space

Furutani said he favors switching schools that are not overcrowded to a so-called single-track calendar, one in which all students go to school at the same time. This system does not create additional classroom space. For overcrowded schools, the board member said he supports the so-called multitrack approach, which increases the capacity of a school.

He said reconsideration of the year-round vote will allow more time to explain to the public the difference between the two approaches. “There is a misunderstanding in the public” that the board voted to impose the multitrack calendar on the entire district.

Meanwhile Thursday, parents and their allies on the school board said they will take the school district to court to fight the board’s decision to put all the district’s 618 schools on a year-round schedule.