A True Compromise: ‘Nobody Likes It’ : Schools: The decision on a year-round schedule was a wrenching one for the L.A. board, but the district had to deal with explosive enrollment growth.

Los Angeles school board member Roberta Weintraub called it the board’s most difficult meeting in the last decade. At times, it deteriorated into name-calling and was punctuated by yelling and tears.

But eight hours after they began the debate, board members voted early Tuesday to put the entire 610,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District on a year-round schedule, beginning in July, 1991.

The final plan was a compromise that ordered a common calendar for virtually all schools, and allowed 109 schools originally slated to go year-round this summer to remain on traditional calendars until the remainder of the district converts in 1991.

“It was a true compromise in the sense that nobody likes it,” board President Jackie Goldberg said Tuesday. “But it does the things that had to happen. We had to have more space, and we had to have a common calendar, and this does both.”

The plan satisfied many parents, who had feared that the board would force some schools to go year-round this year, without enough time to plan for the switch. But it left others uneasy that the result will be a district full of schools crammed beyond capacity.

“I don’t know that this solves the problems,” said Laura Ziskin, parent of a Canyon Elementary School student and one of the organizers of a rally last weekend that drew hundreds of parents protesting year-round schools.

“What’s going to happen in 1993 when everybody’s on multi-track and we still don’t have room? I think our concerns are still the same--the focus (in the district) is not on education.”

But board member Leticia Quezada expressed hope Tuesday that approval of the plan--after years of vacillation--will spell the end of the era of scrambling to find seats for students and allow the board to refocus on instructional issues.

“It puts to rest the housing questions and allows us to deal with the educational issues,” she said. “My hope is there’s enough people out there who will say, ‘This is a modest, sensible approach that mandates change, but does not order it tomorrow.’

“I hope we can all get through the process by trying to make it work. The other choice--to do nothing--is not a real choice.”

The move to a year-round calendar and the requirement that all schools in the district increase their capacities by 23% by 1993 is expected to generate about 60,000 seats in a district that is growing by about 15,000 students each year.

The switch to year-round will also help the district compete for more construction and air-conditioning money from the state--which offers year-round districts priority in tapping the limited funds.

In Sacramento, state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig characterized the year-round plan as inevitable in a district experiencing such explosive growth. “If they didn’t do something, they were in trouble,” he said. “They postponed it two years ago, and now 24,000 (students) are being bused” because they can’t be accommodated in their overcrowded neighborhood schools.

“Year-round may not be the best solution, but it’s better than what the alternatives would have been,” he said.

The plan, approved 5 to 2 after split votes on many of its 19 separate measures, requires 109 elementary schools to increase their capacities this year, by either increasing class sizes, using a multi-track year-round schedule or adding portable classrooms. The remainder of the district’s 400 schools not already on multi-track, year-round schedules must increase their capacities by the 1992-93 school year.

Voting against the plan were West San Fernando Valley representative Julie Korenstein, who said she does not support the concept of a common calendar for all schools, and South-Central Los Angeles representative Rita Walters, a perennial proponent of year-round schools.

“I still support year-round for the entire district, but I voted (against it) as a protest to the actions (other board members) were taking,” Walters said Tuesday.

Walters accused several of her colleagues of trying to manipulate the year-round calendar to provide the longest possible summer vacation for students at single-track schools, while shortening the summer vacation of some multi-track students.

“What is best for the 15% (the percentage of Anglo students in the district) is driving the decision-making on what is best for 85% of the children,” she said. “My constituents are sick of being on the short end of the stick.”

Monday night’s acrimonious hearing reflected the highly charged nature of the debate over year-round--an issue perceived very differently by board members representing overcrowded areas that desperately need the seats year-round provides, and suburban areas that see year-round as a threat to neighborhood stability.

While every board member acknowledged the need to increase space in the district, it appeared at several points during the protracted debate that the board would not be able to muster the four-vote majority necessary to approve any plan to generate the seats.

In the board’s first vote of the evening, the specific measure to adopt a year-round schedule was rejected when board members could not agree on a common calendar. Then, board members reconsidered the measure and approved it 4 to 3.

“When you get into emotional issues like this that are extremely political, with such an enormous amount of public interest, things are pulling at you from every area,” said Roberta Weintraub, who represents the East San Fernando Valley.

“There is no way you’re going to make an unemotional, totally logical decision. You’re going to try and sit there and balance on the teeter-totter until you can find a place to rest without falling off.”

During the marathon discussion that began at 5 p.m. Monday and ended at 1 a.m. Tuesday, the original plan was transformed by a myriad of amendments and compromises to provide wider latitude to schools in choosing single or multi-track calendars--a victory for parents who had complained that they had too little time to adapt to a year-round calendar and worried about fragmenting the community.

“My thinking was if we could delay the plan a year to give people as much lead time as possible, then . . . give them more flexibility for schools to work together to come up with a plan . . . that was the core of a package that I could support,” said Mark Slavkin, who proposed an amendment giving schools more flexibility in determining options to reach the 23% capacity increase.

District officials estimate that about 130 of the district’s 600 schools will be on multi-track schedules by September because there is no other way for them to increase space.

Others will probably convert to multi-track during the next few years, if enrollment growth projected at more than 15,000 per year materializes.

Nevin Avenue Elementary School in South-Central Los Angeles is one of the schools that will probably go multi-track year-round this year. About 685 students attend the school, and another 300 are bused as far away as San Pedro and Granada Hills because they cannot be accommodated at Nevin.

About 125 of those students could return to the school if it went year-round. Principal Louis Owens said parents are not entirely happy with the year-round proposal, but “they will adjust.”

“The problem is we have run out of options,” Owens said. “Even if we could build schools at a record pace, we couldn’t keep up. And who would pay? Nobody would pay for the bond issues that will build new schools. We have no choice.”

Parents at the nearby USC Performing Arts Magnet School worried that the change to a year-round calendar would be incompatible with the school’s mission.

“As a parent, I realize that the school district is between a rock and a hard place,” said Stanley Yon, father of two children at the school. “But potentially, it is very disrupting.”

His 9-year-old daughter may not be able to attend a special summer session of the Joffrey Ballet school in New York next year because it could conflict with the new year-round schedule, he said.

And teachers worried that scheduling music, dance or drama performances will be difficult under a multi-track schedule that rotates students in and out of school.

Besides the year-round provisions, the plan approved by the board also:

* Provides air-conditioning first to those schools that volunteer to go multi-track year round.

* Orders Burton Street Elementary School in Panorama City reopened to serve as a receiving school for children from nearby overcrowded neighborhoods. The school was one of several closed because of declining enrollment in the 1980s.

* Reconfigures campuses in the Verdugo Hills High School area to shift ninth graders to high school and sixth graders to junior high, opening up seats for younger students in the elementary schools.

* Loosens requirements on how many portable classrooms a school can accommodate, while restricting any school from using portables to push their enrollment above 1,000.

Times staff writer Richard Beene contributed to this story.