Parents Urge City School Board Not to Establish Year-Round Schedules

Saying that a controversial proposed solution to school overcrowding may be worse than the problem itself, hundreds of parents and students urged the San Diego city school board on Tuesday not to establish year-round schedules at 18 elementary schools next year.

While school administrators view the so-called multi-track, year-round schedules as an answer to the twin problems of overcrowded campuses and insufficient funds to build enough new schools to meet enrollment demands, the parents told the board that the plan would disrupt family lives and perhaps undermine curriculum and other school activities.

During a nearly four-hour hearing, parent after parent paraded to the speaker’s lectern in the school board meeting room to express dismay over the fact that the plan could result in one of their children attending school while another was on vacation, thereby making it difficult to plan family activities.

“I don’t feel this board or anyone else has a right to break up my family,” said Kathleen McDonough of Mira Mesa.

Faced with such strong sentiments, the board decided late Tuesday to continue reviewing the plan at its Dec. 1 meeting, and to postpone final action until at least Dec. 8.

Way to Stretch Capacity

With local school enrollments expected to increase by as many as 45,000 students by the year 2000, school officials envision the year-round program as one crucial way to stretch the capacity of existing schools--and, in the process, to reduce the amount of money needed to build new schools.

Under the system that the school district staff has proposed, students would attend classes for nine weeks and then vacation for three weeks, a cycle that would be repeated four times annually. Students still would attend classes 180 days a year, the same number as in the traditional September-to-June school year.

The plan calls for students to be divided into four similarly sized groups, or “tracks,” with three tracks attending classes and one on vacation at any given time throughout the year. As a result, school population would effectively be reduced by one-fourth, a point cited by proponents as one of the major advantages offered by the multi-track, year-round plan.

School administrators also argue that the periodic three-week vacations would be less disruptive to students’ learning skills than the traditional summer-long vacation, and that the schedule helps to refresh teachers and other staff throughout the year.

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense for a child learning a new language or being taught a new skill to say, ‘Goodby in June, see you in September,’ ” said Richard Alcorn, former principal of Brooklyn Elementary, which now operates on a year-round system.

Reduced from 22 to 18

School officials originally had proposed that 22 other elementary schools adopt the multi-track plan next year, but reduced that to 18 by recommending an additional one-year delay for four schools--Central, Lee, Audubon and Linda Vista. The 18 schools included in the proposal are Baker, Balboa, Bethune, Boone, Emerson, Encanto, Ericson, Euclid, Hamilton, Horton, Knox, Mason, Paradise Hills, Penn, Sherman, Valencia Park, Walker and Zamorano.

Parents whose children attend some of those schools, however, encouraged the board to exempt their particular school from the plan, with the complaint about the potential disruptive effect that the multi-track schedule could have on their personal lives being the most common lament.

“Can you guarantee our children will be on the same track? Do you want to break up our families?” Josephine Cruz asked in regard to Sherman Elementary.

“This will put great stress on families,” added Dorothea Padrick, who expressed concern about Encanto Elementary’s inclusion in the proposal.

Other parents warned that the multi-track plan could damage school magnet programs by prompting parents to switch their children to other schools.

‘No Academic Advantages’

Daniel Weber, president of the San Diego chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, predicted that the multi-track, year-round plan would “lower already low test scores,” and described the proposal as one that “offers no academic advantages.”

“Multi-track should be a last resort,” Weber said. “It should be done only in extreme cases and not in a wholesale fashion as you plan.”

Framing the problem facing the school board, Supt. Tom Payzant stressed that the multi-track plan is only one component in the school system’s overall approach to meeting its long-range facility needs. In addition to building new schools, school administrators also plan to make increased use of portable classrooms and to rely on techniques such as double-session kindergarten classes and staggered class schedules in an effort to maximize the use of existing facilities.

“These solutions are interconnected,” Payzant told the board. “If one of them were substantially changed, it would have an impact on the others.”

While expressing some concerns about how the multi-track plan would affect specific schools, the board members voiced general support for the concept as a means of grappling with the school district’s growing student population.

Board member Dorothy Smith asked school officials to prepare a list of the potential advantages that multi-track, year-round scheduling could bring to each of the 18 schools, arguing that doing so could allay many parents’ fears.

“I’m concerned about looking parents and the community straight in the eye and saying, ‘Multi-track will benefit your students,’ ” Smith said. “That’s something we have to do.”