Valley Students Join Parents to Protest Year-Round School

More than 1,200 students were kept out of school Wednesday, and several hundred San Fernando Valley parents and their children carried picket signs and chanted slogans in the largest demonstration so far by opponents of a proposal to establish year-round schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Demonstrators from at least half a dozen Valley schools walked four blocks along Ventura Boulevard from the Sherman Oaks School to the office of state Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Los Angeles) in a noisy but orderly protest against district proposals to relieve classroom overcrowding by operating schools year-round.

The demonstrators want Friedman and other Los Angeles-area legislators to push for increased district funding, which they say would head off the need for year-round classes.

“We’re keeping our children out of school today as a symbolic effort,” said Barry Pollack, a parent who helped organize the event. “One day of lost education is better than many days of lost quality education if the children are forced into year-round schools.”

The school board on Monday is expected to decide on proposals calling for the conversion of 109 elementary schools, including 45 in the Valley, to some type of year-round schedule beginning this summer. School Supt. Leonard Britton is recommending that the board require all schools in the district to convert to year-round schedules by summer, 1991.

More than 100 of the district’s 618 schools now operate on year-round schedules.

District officials estimate that they will run out of seats in elementary school classrooms by summer because of continuing enrollment growth unless more room is made available through year-round scheduling, double sessions or increases in classroom size.

Pollack, an emergency room physician who tried unsuccessfully to unseat East Valley school board member Roberta Weintraub in elections last year, said he called for parents opposed to the district proposals to keep their children home Wednesday. About a third of the 300 or so protesters who marched were school-age children.

Significant drops in student attendance, ranging from 18% to 72% of school enrollment, were reported at six of the more than 120 elementary schools in the Valley, district officials said. In all, an estimated 1,260 students more than normal were reported absent from classes at Topeka Drive and Dearborn Street School in Northridge, El Oro Way School in Granada Hills, Dixie Canyon Avenue School in Sherman Oaks, Wilbur Avenue School in Tarzana and Encino School in Encino. Attendance at schools outside the Valley appeared unaffected by the protest.

Sherman Oaks Elementary Principal Grace Snipper said about 30 more children than usual were marked absent at her school of 800 students. After the protest, 16 children came in late, she said.

At Dearborn Street Elementary School in Northridge, however, Principal Richard Lioy said 430 of his 600 students, 72%, were absent Wednesday. Nearly 60% of the students at Dixie Canyon Avenue Elementary were reported absent, and 56% of the students at Topeka Drive Elementary stayed home Wednesday, school principals said.

Parents at the demonstration--many chanting “Save our schools, no year-round”--said they are opposed to the district proposal because it will require children to attend classes during hot Valley summers in rooms without air-conditioning, and it will create problems with child-care and family vacations.

In the past month, millions of dollars in incentive funds for year-round schools and millions more earmarked for air-conditioning year-round schools have been diverted by the state, with the Los Angeles district likely to emerge the biggest loser.

Friedman, who aides said was home sick, issued the parents a written statement promising to “continue to fight for increased funding.” He also asked parents to support statewide bond measures to pay for new school construction money.

Dauna Packer, a Woodland Hills parent with two children in Los Angeles schools, said she hopes to interest other parents in efforts by state Assemblywoman Marian LaFollette (R-Northridge) to break up the Los Angeles district, the nation’s second largest.

LaFollette in the fall created a commission that conducted several sparsely attended public hearings on the possible breakup of the district into eight or more smaller districts. Earlier this month, she persuaded Gov. George Deukmejian to set aside $250,000 for the state Board of Education to study the matter.

After several unsuccessful attempts in past years to have the issue brought before the Legislature, LaFollette has said she now hopes to put the question to voters.