L. B. Will Study 4-Year High School Plan Despite Objections From Some Parents

Despite objections from concerned parents, the school board this week unanimously agreed to study switching to four-year high schools as a hedge against overcrowding.

By including ninth-graders in the Long Beach Unified School District’s five high schools, which now have 10th- through 12th-graders, officials believe they can increase capacity at the elementary level by about 3,300 students.

“I think it’s a natural move,” board President John Kashiwabara said after Monday’s meeting at district headquarters. “It makes sense.”

But Bob Smart, the father of a seventh-grader who would be affected by the change, had different ideas. “This alarms me,” he told the board. “I think it’s being rushed and railroaded. If this is passed, you will be responsible for hundreds of ninth-grade pregnancies and addiction to dope.”

The measure is one of several recommendations to come from a blue-ribbon citizens committee set up to deal with overcrowding in the 66,000-student district, which is growing at a rate of 1,200 students a year. Other recommendations include year-round operation of all elementary schools within five years, the continued use of emergency portable classrooms, establishment of a temporary school at the former site of a Sears store on Long Beach Boulevard downtown and extension of the length of the high school day.

According to Supt. E. Tom Giugni, the district is committed to most of the other recommendations. It is still studying the idea of lengthening the school day, he said. Last year, the board voted to operate four south-central area elementary schools on a year-round basis beginning this summer.

Under the four-year high school plan, the shift of ninth-graders would reduce enrollment at the city’s 14 junior high schools enough to let officials convert three of them to elementary schools, according to Ed Eveland, assistant superintendent for secondary education. That could be accomplished, he said, by busing the students at those schools to other junior highs in their areas.

To make room for ninth-graders, he said, the district could add two buildings to each high school campus, a project that would qualify for state funding.

“It doesn’t upset people by trying to obtain more land” for school construction, Eveland said in a recent interview.

Said Kashiwabara: “Being on one campus for four years will give students more continuity and sequential educational benefits.”

Parents such as Smart say they are concerned about possible ill effects of putting less mature ninth-graders on high school campuses where they are more likely to encounter peer pressure to take drugs, fight and engage in premarital sex.

Bill Goggin, the only other member of the audience to speak out against the plan, said he believed it would encounter much opposition from those directly affected. “I have a hunch that you are going to get blistered on four-year high schools,” Goggin told the board.

Nonetheless, district officials vowed to return next month with a plan for setting up a study committee of students, teachers and administrators. Deputy Supt. Charles Carpenter said the study probably would include a series of public forums in which parents and others can express their views.

“What we want,” he said, “is to study this in an objective, thorough way that will include opportunities for public input.”

Carpenter would not say how and when the district will determine which junior highs would be converted to elementary schools. But in order to meet its target date of implementation by the fall of 1989, Giugni said, a decision on the matter would have to be made by late December or early January.

The blue-ribbon committee’s report on overcrowding became an issue in the recent primary election campaign, during which some school board candidates expressed opposition to its recommendations. With the final election three weeks away, however, only one candidate rose to address the issue at Monday’s board meeting.

“What we need,” said Polly Ridgeway, a candidate in District 3, “is assurances that the process will (involve) plenty of input.”