800 Gather in Protest of Year-Round School Plan

More than 800 people filled the auditorium of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys Thursday night in the largest parent protest to date against proposals for sweeping changes in the school calendar and class sizes, including a 12-month school year.

The meeting was called by West Valley school board member Julie Korenstein, who for more than two hours fielded questions from parents worried about hot summer classrooms and disruption of family vacations.

Ken Warner, who said he has seven children in public schools, accused the Los Angeles Unified School District of failing to plan properly for the soaring enrollment that prompted the problem.

Korenstein replied that the district had a similar plan two years ago to convert all schools to year-round schedules. But, she said, “People spoke against it, I listened to what they had to say, and I voted against year-round.”

But the classroom shortage has grown worse since then, giving the board fewer options beside the conversion to year-round schedules, she said.

Bobbi Fiedler, former congresswoman and ex-school board member, disagreed. She told the audience that the district has about as many students as it did in the late 1970s when she was first elected to the board.

“We managed with existing facilities” then without converting to a 12-month school year, she said.

Parents applauded Lyle Spiegel, who said the Los Angeles district had grown too large to operate efficiently. “Divide it up and we can have our own Valley district,” said Spiegel, who said he has two children at Welby Way Elementary School in Canoga Park.

It was at least the third meeting for parents in the west San Fernando Valley that has turned into a rally against the year-round plan. Opposition to the plan is centered in the Valley and the Westside.

Los Angeles school officials have said the district--the nation’s second largest--will run out of elementary classroom seats by summer because of enrollment growth that is expected to continue through the 1990s. Seats at the district’s junior high schools will be filled by 1993, district officials said.

A plan to increase the number of available seats at elementary schools by 23% was presented to the seven-member school board in December.

Under the proposal, schools would have to choose either larger class sizes or year-round and double-session schedules. District officials hope the plan would make room for an additional 60,000 students expected to enroll by fall, 1992.

The school board is expected to decide on the proposal at its Feb. 5 meeting.

Beginning this summer, 108 elementary schools that have reached capacity or receive students from filled schools would be required to change from the traditional school year calendar under the district’s proposal. Forty-five of those schools are in the San Fernando Valley, which now has 15 schools on a year-round calendar.

This fall, enrollment in the Los Angeles school district went up by 15,000 students, pushing the district’s total enrollment past 610,000. Even larger increases are expected in coming years, officials said.

The reopening of the district’s closed schools, which would provide about 8,000 seats, and new school construction, which is expected to add another 2,800 seats by 1991, are not enough to accommodate the district’s growing enrollment, district officials said.

Most of the district’s recent growth has been in the Valley, district officials said. In addition to soaring enrollment by Valley residents, another 23,000 students are bused from filled schools in other parts of the city. That number is expected to triple by 1993, officials said.

Parents with children in Valley schools who oppose the changes say that the district should first install air-conditioning in all of its classrooms before converting schools to year-round schedules. District officials estimate that it costs about $27,000 to air-condition each classroom.

Some parents from Dearborn Street Elementary School began circulating petitions this week that pledge signers to keep their children home if they are required to attend school if forecasts call for temperatures of more than 90 degrees or if the air is judged unhealthful by the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

The petitions will be presented to the school board next week, Dearborn parent Rita Morrow said.

Other parents from Sherman Oaks Elementary School say they are planning a demonstration at their campus on Wednesday to protest the possible change to year-round schedules.

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