Long Beach : 4-Year High School Plan

In an effort to lessen the impact of growing enrollments, Long Beach Unified School District officials want to implement a system of four-year high schools.

Under a plan unveiled earlier this week, the district’s five high schools--which now accommodate 10th through 12th grades--would be expanded to include 9th graders. By lessening enrollment at the junior high level, said Ed Eveland, assistant superintendent for secondary education, the district could consolidate the use of its space by turning three of its junior high campuses into elementary schools and distributing the students at those schools among the district’s 11 remaining junior high schools.

To accommodate the added students in the high schools, Eveland said, the district would add two buildings to each campus, a project that would be paid for by the state. The bottom line, he said, would be an increased capacity at the elementary level of about 3,300 students.

Eveland said he hopes to bring the plan before the Board of Education for formal approval in two or three weeks. If approved, he said, the district hopes to implement it by the fall of 1989.