Year-Round School Issue at Crucial Point

It’s a scenario that keeps replaying itself, like a bad dream.

Nearly overwhelmed by increasingly overcrowded classrooms, Los Angeles Unified School District officials propose a radical change: Every school in the sprawling district will operate year-round.

Outraged parents rise up in protest, and the ambitious plans evaporate in the tumult. And enrollment continues to grow.

Today, the stage is set for another replay, as the school board again takes up the volatile issue of year-round schools. But this time the stakes are even higher as board members face the likelihood that, come next September, the district literally will run out of space for its students.

Parents will have their say at a series of public hearings before board members next month, and the board will very likely vote on a final plan by early February.

About one-fourth of the district’s 610,000 students already attend year-round schools. But so far, the nation’s second-largest school district has dodged the bullet of placing all--or even most--of its schools on some kind of year-round calendar.

But now, even the most stalwart opponents of year-round schools agree that may change in the coming months.

“The main issue now is not ‘whether,’ it’s ‘when’ ” said board member Roberta Weintraub, a perennial foe of districtwide year-round schools. “I don’t think there’s a choice much anymore.”

An Issue Since 1985

The board has been grappling with the issue since 1985, when former Supt. Harry Handler--alarmed by mushrooming enrollment figures--proposed adopting some form of year-round operation for all the district’s 618 schools.

Several overcrowded schools were already operating year-round at that time, and more were being added each year.

In 1986, the board voted to begin phasing in year-round operation, gradually converting the district to a year-round calendar by 1991.

Then, in 1987, after months of emotional hearings, the board voted 4 to 3 to make all the district’s schools year-round, beginning in July, 1989. But after heated internal debate and massive public outcry, the board scuttled the plan and returned to its piecemeal approach, adding a handful of schools to the year-round program and ordering more portable classrooms for other schools.

Now, “there are no longer any clever little ways to tinker with the system here and there and deal with” the overcrowding problem, says the school board’s newest member, Mark Slavkin.

“We just drifted here by default into this position,” he said. “Now, it’s time to fix it in a way that’ll make sense for five or 10 years, not as a short-term response to some blip on the screen.”

The “blip” this year was a record jump in enrollment, which added more than 15,300 students to the district.

The increase--which occurred primarily in areas where schools were already overcrowded--has caused more than 20,000 students to be bused from their neighborhoods to schools with classroom space in mainly neighborhoods on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley.

That has pushed even the receiving schools to their limits, and brought the overcrowding problem to the doorstep of those who have resisted year-round schools in the past.

“(Resistance) is no longer the attitude I run into when I talk to folks in the community I represent,” said Slavkin, who represents the Westside. “The schools are full. They’re full with kids being bused from other parts of town.

“We’re no longer arguing ‘What overcrowding? It’s not my problem.’ Now, it’s a very real problem and (parents) want it addressed.”

Parents have complained to board members that their receiver schools cannot continue to absorb the overflow students--many of whom speak little or no English--without sacrifices in the quality of their children’s education.

For the first time, those suburban parents may find year-round schooling a lesser evil than busing because year-round schools at least would bring stability to their children’s lives.

Year-round operation can allow a school to accommodate up to one-third more students than a traditional calendar.

At overcrowded schools on year-round calendars, students are divided into several different groups, or “tracks,” and each track starts school at a different time in the year. As a result, vacation breaks are staggered.

Most students attend school the same number of days as their counterparts in traditional-schedule schools.

In schools that are not overcrowded, a single-track system could be used, with all students on the same schedule.

Initially, the multi-track system could be used at only the most overcrowded schools, with the other schools using a single-track plan that would not add additional seats, but would bring conformity to the district and allow community support services--such as day care and recreation providers--to adapt their schedules.

The district has five schedules for the estimated 150,000 students who attend 102 year-round schools.

A major complaint of parents of year-round students has been that the varying schedules made it difficult to arrange child care or family vacations, but board members say those problems could be minimized by putting all schools on a single calendar.

One plan the board might consider more palatable would put all schools on a year-round schedule that provides a shorter summer vacation, augmented by a two-week December break and a one-month spring break.

This time around, board members say they hope the year-round option will be perceived as an educationally and economically sound solution to the district’s overcrowding woes, rather than a desperation move.

Studies of the academic performance of year-round students have been mixed, but most experts say it does not impede learning, and that the shorter vacations may help some students retain information.

And it would be cost-effective--particularly if it could hold down the number of students bused to relieve overcrowding--a strong incentive in a district facing the need to cut up to $150 million from its budget next year.

The district now spends $26 million--$1,300 per child--each year busing students away from overcrowded schools.

Besides cutting transportation costs, a year-round plan could increase district revenue, because the state pays $156 per student, per year, to year-round schools--money that can be used for any educational purpose.

According to staff enrollment projections, the district will need to add at least 60,000 more elementary classroom seats to accommodate new students during the next four years.

“We’re in a crisis situation at the elementary school level right now,” said Gordon Wohlers, head of the district office that coordinates use of classroom space. “We will be out of (elementary) classroom seats at the beginning of the next school year.”

Wohlers said he will present several options to the board--including reopening closed West Valley campuses, providing more portable classrooms, increasing class size, and putting more schools on year-round, multi-track systems. “There is no single solution,” he said.

It Won’t Be the Same

Whatever set of solutions is ultimately approved, it will likely include some form of year-round calendar for most, if not all, of the district.

“School will not be the same, in terms of the elimination of the three-month summer vacation,” said board President Jackie Goldberg, whose Hollywood-Wilshire Corridor area includes some of the most crowded year-round campuses in the district.

“There will be resistance to change on the part of many groups, just because it’s change. Lots of times, we only change when we have to. Now, we have to,” said Goldberg, who has long been a proponent of districtwide year-round schools.

“It will no longer be helpful for parents to say use the empty space first; we have done that. Or to say build more schools; we are doing that. We have to increase the capacity at the existing schools. There aren’t too many ways to do that.”