Some Alternatives Offered to Ease School Crowding

With Los Angeles school officials heading for a showdown over putting more schools on a year-round calendar, Board of Education member Mark Slavkin on Monday offered a package of alternative ways to relieve overcrowding.

Slavkin’s 12-point package ranges from seeking help from the Legislature and California voters to using school administrative offices for classrooms and even leasing unused schools from surrounding districts.

Saying the district “cannot go it alone,” Slavkin called for greater cooperation with local governments in ensuring there will be enough schools. He proposed a cities/schools task force to review existing law and make recommendations for changes.

He also suggested putting schools on the sites of large corporations and opening the campuses to children of employees and those in surrounding neighborhoods.

Other large districts--including the one in Dade County, Fla.--already are operating similar work-site schools.

Some of Slavkin’s proposals, such as reopening schools closed years ago when area enrollments declined, are already under consideration.

Others, such as asking the governor and the Legislature to place a school bond measure on the June ballot and persuading California voters to loosen requirements for approval of local bond measures, are beyond the school board’s jurisdiction.

Nonetheless, Slavkin said he felt it was important to offer his ideas before the board takes action, tentatively scheduled for Feb. 5, on a series of measures aimed at increasing capacity in the burgeoning Los Angeles Unified School District by 23% by 1993. The district added about 15,000 students this year, boosting enrollment in kindergarten through 12th grades to 610,149.

Among the most controversial of the capacity-increasing methods is a proposal to put more--or even all--of the district’s more than 600 schools on a year-round calendar. That proposal is generating the most controversy on the Westside--which Slavkin represents--and parts of the San Fernando Valley.

But Slavkin said Monday his proposals should not be taken as a signal that he opposes operating more schools throughout the year as a way to relieve overcrowding.

“We need to accommodate as many students as possible in the areas in which they live,” Slavkin said, “and that doesn’t rule out more year-round schools. . . . But we need to be more creative about providing additional facilities.”

In the inner city and on the Eastside, parents have complained that their children have borne the brunt of the overcrowding crisis because they are the ones who have had to endure long bus rides to suburban schools. Some of their schools have been on year-round calendars for several years.

In keeping with board policy, Slavkin’s proposals were not debated Monday but were sent to a committee and scheduled for discussion by the full board beginning Jan. 29.