Board Shelves Districtwide Year-Round School Plan

After months of fiery public debate, Los Angeles Unified School District officials Monday quietly withdrew a proposal for districtwide year-round schooling next year, conceding that a majority of the school board would not agree to radically alter class and vacation schedules for nearly 600,000 students.

District Supt. Leonard Britton said in a prepared statement that it is too late to replace the traditional September-to-June school calendar for all students with a year-round schedule by July, 1989--a date the Los Angeles school board agreed to but then swiftly tabled last October after a massive public outcry.

“Frankly, it is very late to place the entire school district on a new calendar in July, 1989,” Britton said. “Therefore, I am withdrawing (the proposal) at this time.”

Advantages Cited

Proponents say year-round schooling offers a way to ease overcrowding by placing some students in classes during the summer, provides educational advantages such as better retention of information and is a more efficient use of school buildings.

They also say the current practice of placing only the most crowded schools on year-round schedules is unfair, particularly to minorities who make up the bulk of students at these schools. But critics say year-round schools disrupt family vacations and students’ summer jobs, make child care more difficult and force some students to spend summer days in hot classrooms without air conditioning.

About one-quarter of district students are currently on year-round calendars. The district adopted a policy two years ago phasing in year-round schooling for all students by the 1991-92 school year.

Britton, who took over the helm of the district only months before the tumultuous debates on the proposal began last fall, said Monday that he has instructed his staff to present a new overall plan next fall that will spell out how the entire district can eventually be converted to year-round operation.

“That is (still) the goal,” he said in an interview Monday. But he acknowledged that a majority of the seven-member school board may never agree to a plan that will make it happen.

The board could continue to place crowded schools on year-round calendars in a piecemeal fashion, or it could rely on busing and portable classrooms to ease overcrowding.

No More Debates

Warren Furutani, the board member who cast the swing vote in favor of the year-round plan last October only to change his mind a week later and ask that it be shelved, said the superintendent’s action basically saved the board the trouble of again debating an issue that would lose.

One of the plan’s strongest proponents, board member Jackie Goldberg, agreed, saying: “What we saw today was the recognition that there aren’t four votes to do it (convert all schools to year-round schedules) all at once.”

Four of the seven board members--Furutani, Alan Gershman, Roberta Weintraub and Julie Korenstein--oppose districtwide year-round schooling in 1989. Board members Goldberg, Rita Walters and Leticia Quezada favor it.

Furutani said he does not want to reconsider a districtwide year-round plan until the district decides what type of year-round calendar it wants to use. The district is currently using five year-round schedules in about 90 of its 618 regular schools, in addition to the traditional two-semester calendar.

Report on Hearings

The board was expected to vote on the year-round proposal Monday after accepting a report on a series of public meetings ordered last October when Furutani complained that district parents were too confused by the plan.

Those meetings, held throughout the district and conducted by a board committee headed by Furutani, were concluded last month. On Monday, the board officially accepted the report, which confirmed Furutani’s views about widespread “opposition, confusion and misinformation.”

During its deliberations on the year-round issue last October, the board established a task force of parents, administrators, teachers and community members to study year-round calendars and recommend one that could be used by all of the district’s more than 600 elementary, junior and senior high schools.

The district’s existing year-round schools are primarily located in Latino and Asian neighborhoods along the Wilshire corridor, near downtown, in the East San Fernando Valley and in the district’s southeast region.

The so-called “multi-track” year-round calendar allows a school to increase its capacity by 25% or more by breaking students into three or four rotating groups, with some groups having classes during the summer.

A “single-track” calendar keeps all students in a school on the same class and vacation schedule. It does not create additional classroom space, but it would allow all schools to be on the same basic schedule and would give the district more flexibility to cope with crowding.