45 Schools Face Big Changes in Scheduling

About 45 elementary schools in the San Fernando Valley face dramatic changes in their school calendar, beginning this summer, if the Los Angeles school board passes a proposal to relieve classroom overcrowding.

Administrators of Valley schools say the plan--which would require those schools to choose either larger classes, year-round schedules or double-session days, or a combination of those--faces a host of logistical problems, including the installation of millions of dollars worth of air-conditioning.

But those problems probably are easier solved than the task of persuading Valley parents to embrace such radical changes in the traditional school year, said Sylmar elementary school principal Yvonne Chan.

“I don’t see a major problem changing the schedules of students; we can do that by July,” Chan said. “But if there is dissension among parents, that will take longer to work out.”

Officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District unveiled a plan Monday to increase the number of classroom seats throughout the fast-growing district by 23%. Seats for an estimated 60,000 additional elementary school students are needed by fall of 1992, said Gordon Wohlers, who directs the district’s classroom space planning.

The board will vote on the proposal after public hearings, scheduled for next month. If approved, 108 elementary schools--which have reached capacity or receive students from filled schools--would be required to choose this spring how they will cope with crowding. Forty-five of those schools are in the Valley.

The changes would begin as early as July.

One choice given schools is conversion to a year-round schedule. That method requires the student body to be divided into three or four groups, with one group on vacation while the others are in class, and a new group going on vacation every three or four months.

Currently, there are 15 year-round elementary schools in the Valley.

The plan also allows for schools, as a temporary measure, to have a single year-round group. Students in a single-track year-round school get a six-week summer vacation, beginning in July, and an eight-week winter vacation, beginning in December. That plan also would require schools to either add portable classrooms or increase class size.

Another proposal is to divide a school’s students into two groups, one attending class in the morning and the other in the afternoon. That proposal would require an 11-month school year, from the beginning of August to the end of June, to compensate for shorter school days.

School principals will have the final say in picking among the proposed methods. If principals do not pick a plan, district officials will.

School district officials say the proposals are only the first step in eventually converting all of the district’s 600 or so schools to a year-round schedule. East Valley board member Roberta Weintraub, formerly an opponent of year-round schools, told her colleagues Monday that both year-round and double-session schedules are probably inevitable.

That came as bad news to some Valley parents who are already angry about a shortage of bilingual teachers to handle the large influx of students this fall being bused from inner-city schools.

Many administrators agree with Joan Marks, principal of Carpenter Avenue elementary school in Studio City, who said no plan will work without support from a majority of teachers and parents. Past attempts at converting traditional-calendar schools to year-round schools have been scuttled by the board because of strong opposition from parents, including many in the Valley.

“There are some real serious problems, beginning with air-conditioning,” said Malka Tasoff, a parent of two children attending Wilbur Avenue elementary school in Tarzana. “It’s unbearable in the summer without it, and even if they have the money to put it in, will they have the money to repair and maintain them?”

Most classrooms in the Valley slated for the changes do not have air-conditioning, officials said. It would take from six months to a year or longer for the district to install air-conditioning, using a portion of the state funds that have been set aside for that purpose, said Lori Morgan of the state Office of Local Assistance.

District officials say that in past years, it cost an average of $27,000 to air-condition a single classroom. State funds generally cover about two-thirds the total cost, they said.

Tasoff said the 100 or so parents who belong to a Wilbur Avenue school support group will be meeting in coming weeks to decide whether to oppose the district proposal. A public hearing on the plan before the school board is scheduled for Jan. 4 at 6 p.m. at the district’s downtown headquarters.

West Valley representative Julie Korenstein said she is reluctant to have the board impose a plan on all schools and prefers to allow each school to decide the method of increasing classroom space. She said, where possible, she favors reopening most of the district’s closed schools.

District officials said reopening the schools would provide at most 8,000 additional classroom seats, far short of the number needed.

School construction will provide seats for about 2,800 new elementary school students by 1991, Wohlers said. Between now and 1993, construction projects for 10,000 more students are planned but have yet to receive full state funding, he said. About 30,000 students are now housed in portable classrooms, he said.

But school construction is not expected to keep pace with growth in the 615,000-student district, the country’s second largest, officials said. Since 1981, growth in the area has on average been equal to about 272 additional classrooms a year, officials said. This year, enrollment increased by more than 15,000 students, and officials predict even larger increases in the 1990s.

The district will run out of seats in elementary schools before summer unless some changes are approved, Wohlers said. The shortage will reach junior high and high schools in future years, he said.

In the past, the overflow of students from crowded inner-city areas has been bused to relatively uncrowded schools in the Valley and Westside. But now, many of those schools have reached their capacity, forcing the district to find ways of providing more seats.

District officials said growth in the area will triple the number of students being bused from crowded schools by 1993, with the majority ending up in the Valley. About 23,000 kindergarten-through-high school students now ride buses because the schools in their neighborhoods are filled.

Los Angeles teachers union President Wayne Johnson said Tuesday that he believes the district is obligated by its past practices to allow teachers to transfer out of schools converted to year-round schedules.

“But if the district has a plan to put all schools on year-round schedules within a certain period of time, it would make transfers somewhat academic,” said Johnson, head of United Teachers-Los Angeles.