The Times Poll : Year-Round Classes: Public Deeply Split

Parents in the Los Angeles Unified School District are so deeply divided over year-round schools that rallying public support behind any particular solution may be extremely difficult, according to a new Los Angeles Times Poll.

One thing the parents do agree on, however, is that the present situation is unfair because students in some overcrowded schools are required to go year-round while those in other areas of the district remain on traditional schedules.

As a group, parents seem as ambivalent as their elected representatives on the school board on how best to ease overcrowding. The poll shows significant support among parents for a range of options--adding portable classrooms, reopening schools, districtwide year-round schedules, making only overcrowded schools year-round and more busing.

Avoidance Options

Despite the popular belief that parents tend to embrace year-round schools once they experience it firsthand, the poll does not show significantly stronger support for the idea among such parents. At the same time, a clear majority of all parents in the district said they would not send their children to private schools or move to another district to avoid a year-round plan.

“Parents are almost evenly split on the year-round issue,” said Times Poll Director I. A. Lewis. “It’s almost a question of whether you want to say the glass is half empty or half full. It’s an issue people feel strongly about and it is going to be difficult to resolve. It’s not just going to fade away.”

The survey--the first comprehensive local opinion poll on the issue--found that 50% of district parents oppose year-round school, while 39% said they favor it. Among parents whose children now attend year-round schools, the split was 50% in favor and 45% opposed.

Sixty-eight percent of district parents said they don’t think it is fair to have some children in the district go year-round while others remain on traditional calendars. Nineteen percent said such an arrangement is fair.

Thirty-one percent of district parents said that adding portable classrooms is the best way to ease school overcrowding, while 23% cited reopening schools. Sixteen percent said they thought the school board should approve a districtwide year-round plan, while 13% favor year-round schedules only for overcrowded schools. Seven percent said more busing is the solution.

Makeup of Respondents

The Times telephone poll, conducted Nov. 3-5, surveyed 1,778 Los Angeles County residents, including 908 district residents, 366 individuals with children in the district, and 112 parents of children now attending year-round schools.

Faced with a burgeoning enrollment, the Los Angeles school district has been grappling with the year-round issue for the last five years, with emotions running high on both sides. In recent years the school board placed 93 schools on year-round calendars, changed the integration ratios at certain schools and added hundreds of portable classrooms to crowded campuses. It continues to bus thousands of youngsters from crowded, mostly minority schools to schools with extra seats.

Year-round schooling does not mean students have no vacation time, but it can create more classroom space by having some students attend class while others are on vacation. The traditional three-month summer break is replaced by shorter vacations interspersed throughout the year.

On Oct. 12, the board approved a proposal to place all 618 district schools on year-round operation by July, 1989, a move that attracted national attention because it would have made Los Angeles the largest year-round school district in the nation.

But a week later, the board rescinded that decision at the request of newly elected board member Warren Furutani, who asked his colleagues to reconsider the issue at a later date to allow time for more public discussion. As a result, the board agreed to hold a series of public meetings throughout the district over the next three months and to take a new vote on the controversial issue sometime after March 1.

School board members differed in their interpretation of the poll result that showed district parents nearly evenly divided over year-round schools.

Goldberg Encouraged

Jackie Goldberg, a strong proponent of the districtwide plan, was encouraged by the results.

“Fifty percent (against year-round schools) is quite a positive sign,” Goldberg said. “I think it’s astonishing. . . . If you had taken the number of people who came to the board to speak, you would have assumed that 95% were against it. Maybe more people have begun to see the merit” of year-round scheduling.

But year-round opponent Roberta Weintraub said: “That’s a high negative (50% opposed),” she said. “Year-round does not have much support. What does have support is doing anything to hold it off.”

Board President Rita Walters, a strong proponent of districtwide year-round schooling, said she found the poll’s findings “heartening,” because they suggested to her that a good number of parents understand the complexity of the overcrowding problem. She expressed dismay, however, that so many parents cited adding portable classrooms and reopening schools as ways of easing overcrowding.

“If people understood the constraints in terms of the size of a campus and what adding portables does to playground space . . . and if they understood the locations of the closed schools . . . I think it might move people more quickly to the position of year-round for everybody,” she said.

The majority of the 23 closed campuses are located in the West San Fernando Valley and the Westside, far from the overcrowded neighborhoods where more classroom seats are needed. Those schools were closed in the early 1980s due to low enrollment.

Furutani said he, too, was surprised that more respondents were not opposed to year-round schools and questioned whether people fully understand the issue.

“The main thing out there is confusion,” Furutani said.

Retention of Knowledge

Asked to name the best argument for year-round school, the greatest percentage of district parents (44%) said the schedules help students retain more knowledge because of shorter vacation breaks. The district’s main argument for switching to year-round schools has been that the change would help ease overcrowding--and 30% of the parents agreed. Sixteen percent said reducing vandalism through shorter vacations is the best reason for year-round schools, while 14% cited more efficient use of school facilities.

District officials were particularly interested in the high percentage of parents who said that better retention of knowledge is the best reason for year-round school. “That says that parents are open to discussing a change in calendar if we can make a strong educational argument for it. . . . We need to make the educational argument if we are going to sell this to the community at large,” Furutani said.

Research indicates that schools on a single-track year-round calendar, in which all students attend school and have vacations at the same time, have derived educational benefits, but studies have not proven that there are similar advantages associated with multi-track calendars, in which students at the same school have different in-class and vacation schedules. District officials have proposed single-track operation for the majority of district schools and multi-track schedules for the overcrowded schools.

As for the greatest problem created by a year-round calendar, 36% of parents districtwide cited child care difficulties. Thirty-two percent said the schedule disrupts family vacations and 24% said it means that students can’t work at summer jobs.

Limited Year-Round

Three board members, Weintraub, Alan Gershman and Julie Korenstein, favor year-round scheduling only for crowded schools. Weintraub has often argued that forcing such a major change on communities where crowding is not a problem is wrong and would alienate many parents, particularly middle-class families who Weintraub says would leave the district if a districtwide year-round plan was implemented.

The Times poll, however, found that the majority of all parents in the district either could not afford to move or would not consider it as a way of avoiding year-round schooling. Only 11% said they could afford to move and would consider it.

Sixty-one percent said they would stay with the public school if a year-round schedule took effect in their neighborhood, although nearly one-third said they would consider enrolling their children in private schools.

VIEWS ON YEAR-ROUND SCHOOLS

These are results of calls made between Tuesday, Nov. 3, and Thursday, Nov. 5, by the Los Angeles Times Poll to 1,778 respondents in Los Angeles County, of whom 908 live in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is facing the prospect of making its calendar year-round.

“Do you favor or oppose year-round schools?”

Districtwide In Children in With Year-Round Year-Round Districtwide Children Area Schools Favor strongly 27% 25% 28% 36% Favor somewhat 12 13 14 15 Oppose somewhat 13 13 16 13 Oppose strongly 28 38 28 31 Not aware 9 5 6 0 Don’t know 11 6 8 5

“What should the district do about year-round schools?”

Districtwide In Children in With Year-Round Year-Round Districtwide Children Area Schools Place all schools on year-round schedules 18% 16% 15% 14% Continue placing only crowded schools on 12 13 14 10 year-round schedules Reopen closed schools 22 23 25 20 Add portable classrooms 28 31 32 36 Increase busing from crowded schools 6 7 6 5 Don’t know 14 10 8 15