Year-Round System Voted for Schools : Education: L.A. board’s 4-3 compromise comes after angry debate.

After more than four hours of often acrimonious debate, the city school board voted 4 to 3 on Monday to put the entire Los Angeles Unified School District on a year-round schedule, beginning in July, 1991.

However, the board voted 6 to 1 to delay the conversion of 109 elementary schools that were slated to go year-round in July. Those schools will have to increase capacities by 23% this year, but they could accomplish that by putting more students in each classroom or by using portable classrooms. The schools will not be required to go year-round until the district’s remaining 400-plus schools go year-round next year.

The districtwide plan will require all elementary, junior high and high schools to convert next year to a calendar that eliminates the traditional three-month summer vacation. Single-track schools would have six weeks of summer vacation beginning in early July, augmented by a six-week midwinter break.

About 350 schools are expected to choose single-track, in which all students attend on the same schedule. This alternative does not create more seats for students so schools would have to use other options. At multi-track schools, students are divided into four groups with one group off at all times, increasing a school’s space by about a third.

The proposal was passed on the board’s second vote at 9:45 p.m. after an initial attempt failed 3 to 4 when board members could not agree on a common schedule--one that preserves as much summer vacation as possible for single-track students but does not unfairly affect multi-track students.

After the first vote, board President Jackie Goldberg angrily recessed the meeting. Board members returned and reconsidered the motion half an hour later.

The discussion had deteriorated into name-calling and yelling among board members. Rita Walters, who represents an area that already has many year-round schools, accused some of her colleagues of pandering to their middle-class constituencies.

The debate was reminiscent of two years ago when the board voted to make all district schools year-round, then rescinded the action in the face of public disapproval.

This time “we owe it to the children of the school district to come to some compromise,” urged board member Leticia Quezada in proposing the calendar that finally won approval.

“It’s a decision I’m not happy with, and a lot of people are not going to be happy with, but it says to people that we are going to do some broad, long-range planning,” said Quezada, her voice breaking as she urged support from her colleagues.

Voting for the year-round proposal were Quezada, Goldberg, Roberta Weintraub and Mark Slavkin. Opposing it were Walters, Warren Furutani and Julie Korenstein.

Officials say the huge school district is in a crisis, faced with the need to find room for about 15,000 additional children expected to enroll next fall.

More than 24,000 children are already being bused out of overcrowded neighborhoods to less-crowded schools in outlying areas. Gordon Wohlers, in charge of year-round planning for the district, said seats in those schools will be gone by September, when the district will literally run out of space.

The district experienced a record jump in enrollment last year, as more than 15,000 new students came in--11,000 of them in elementary schools. That sparked a chaotic scramble to find enough seats and filled up classrooms in previously uncrowded Valley and Westside schools.

It costs about $1,400 a year to bus a child from an overcrowded school--an expensive proposition for a district grappling with the need to cut $150 million from its budget next year.

Although year-round operation would cost the district between $115,000 and $230,000 more annually per school, that cost would be offset by state incentive payments, which have run about $150 per student in the past. Most of that money has gone to schools to improve their instructional programs.

Converting to year-round operation would also give the Los Angeles district first call on state construction money to accelerate its flagging building program.

For years, board members have acknowledged the need to do something to increase schools’ capacities--but they have avoided biting the political bullet that year-round operation represents.

Five years ago, with several campuses already operating year-round, the board voted unanimously to approve former Supt. Harry Handler’s plan to phase schools into the year-round system and convert the entire district to a year-round calendar by 1991.

Then, in October, 1987, after months of emotional public hearings--and enrollment growth far below what the district staff had predicted--board members voted 4 to 3 to put all schools on a year-round schedule beginning in July, 1989.

But five months later, after heated internal debate and a public outcry, the board reconsidered the vote and Furutani reversed himself, causing the plan to be scuttled.

The board continued converting individual schools to year-round operation until it reached 102 campuses. But the process has resulted in a hodgepodge of schedules and has led to complaints that minority children in inner-city areas are being made to shoulder the burden of district overcrowding. About 95% of the children in year-round schools now are minority.

Times staff writer Sam Enriquez contributed to this story.