La Jolla Grade Reconfiguration Plan Aims to Relieve Crowding in Elementary Schools

All La Jolla sixth-graders will go to middle school and all ninth-graders will go to La Jolla High beginning in September, 1990, under a plan presented to San Diego city schools trustees Tuesday.

The plan, intended to relieve crowding at the elementary level, has the support of parent and teacher groups at the five La Jolla-area schools. Board members indicated they will adopt the idea when a final vote is taken next week.

Under the proposal, La Jolla High will change to a four-year, grades 9-12 configuration; Muirlands Junior High will become a grades 6-8 school, and the three elementary schools--Bird Rock, La Jolla and Torrey Pines--will change to grades kindergarten through 5.

By moving all sixth-graders to Muirlands and all ninth-graders to the high school, the shift will help solve the elementary enrollment crunch by taking advantage of empty classrooms expected at the secondary level, administrators told school board members Tuesday.

Reaching Capacity

According to enrollment estimates, Bird Rock--with a capacity of 460 students--and Torrey Pines--with a capacity of 390, will be at those levels next year. La Jolla Elementary will be within 50 students of its 630-student capacity. Those schools receive substantial numbers of students from Barrio Logan, who voluntarily are bused under the district’s integration program.

In contrast, Muirlands will be almost 350 students below its 1,215-student capacity next year, and La Jolla High will be almost 300 students below its 1,360-student capacity.

The plan is based on a proposal first suggested in 1983 by a La Jolla-area advisory committee of parents and teachers but not acted upon because few capacity problems then existed. In 1983, half the kindergarten through sixth-grade children and one-third of all school-age children in La Jolla attended private schools.

Since then, the closures of two elementary schools have increased the population at the three remaining schools. Also, the number of bused students has grown, and principals believe that district curriculum reforms and the high cost of private education have brought some private students back to public education, although the number of private-school students remains high.

Although trustees expressed support Tuesday for reconfiguration, several nevertheless indicated specific concerns.

Improvements Promised

Kay Davis said that several La Jolla parents have called her over how the gifted student program--a perennially strong item of interest in the upscale area--will be affected under the changes. Several of the schools have waiting lists of students eligible but unable to enter gifted classes because of crowding. Area Assistant Supt. Catherine Hopper promised improvements.

Shirley Weber questioned the $85,000 estimate of the transition cost, saying she could think of many other areas to spend that sum during a year of budget-cutting expected in 1989-90. (There would also be a $40,000 one-time cost for moving two portable classrooms to La Jolla High.)

Hopper said most of the money would be spent on seminars to smooth the way for high school teachers to understand how to handle ninth-graders and for those at the junior-high level to design an exemplary middle-school curriculum at Muirlands. National research increasingly has emphasized middle school--with its sixth- through eighth-grade setup--as providing a better academic and social transition to high school for preteens than the traditional junior high 7-9 program.

Hopper promised a more detailed breakdown of the $85,000 estimate next week in the face of skepticism by both Weber and colleague Jim Roache.

“I’ve been to a couple of these staff development things, and I haven’t been excited about them,” Weber said.

Year-Round Schedules

Board President Susan Davis backed the plan but cautioned that other areas of the district--such as the crowded Mid-City and Southeast San Diego neighborhoods--would not consider the enrollment figures in La Jolla particularly onerous. Most schools in those areas have gone to unpopular year-round schedules and divided students into four tracks, three of which attend at any one time, in an effort to expand school capacity.

“In other areas, the numbers we see here just would not generate the type of attention being given here,” Davis said.

But Hopper said schools such as Bird Rock must now hold some classes in hallways and auditoriums.