S.D. Trustees Pull Support for Multi-Track Schools

In a major policy switch, San Diego city schools trustees Tuesday decided they will no longer promote multi-track, year-round schooling as a fundamental solution to the overcrowding plaguing many schools.

The board voted to remove four schools next fall from the multi-track schedule and to undertake an extensive construction program of 25 new portable classrooms, or bungalows, at an initial estimated cost of more than $2 million.

In addition, a majority indicated they will support a move to cover part of the construction cost through operating funds rather than relying solely on the capital budget, at least for the 1990-91 school year.

That capital budget already is dangerously short of funds potentially needed to carry out a variety of long-term needs, including several new schools, costing up to $50 million. Trustees once more Tuesday mulled over, without decision, ways to solve school overcrowding permanently in the predominantly non-white areas of Southeast San Diego, Paradise Hills, and mid-city.

Among the ideas considered was a wholesale move to sell off parts of school sites, such as playgrounds, no longer used in areas with declining student populations.

The board voted, 4-1, with Susan Davis in opposition, to begin circumscribing the multi-track philosophy that the district adopted in 1988. Four of the 19 schools now on the schedule--Baker, Penn, Paradise Hills and Horton--will revert to either single-track or traditional nine-month schedules with the 1990-91 school year.

“I think you are seeing a consensus (among this board) to move schools off multi-track year-round as quickly as possible,” Trustee Jim Roache said.

Under multi-track, three groups of students attend school at any one time on overlapping nine-week schedules while a fourth group has three weeks of vacation. The rotating tracks reduce the number of students on campus by about one-fourth at a time, allowing greater use of existing buildings without new construction.

About 27% of the district’s 67,000 elementary students now attend multi-track schools, almost all of them at largely non-white schools south of Interstate 8, where most of the student-age population growth has taken place. The district has 109 elementary schools.

But teachers at many multi-track schools dislike the concept because some do not have their own classrooms under the system, but must move both their students and supplies every nine weeks from room to room as other teachers go on vacation.

Also, some trustees feel special magnet programs at schools such as Horton and Baker elementaries have been hurt because not all teachers are on campus at the same time to help plan the special curriculums.

“Obviously the sentiment of the board has shifted on multi-track,” Supt. Tom Payzant said Tuesday. “And I haven’t been able to convince the board” of the benefits.

Payzant said he believes many teachers and principals dislike multi-track because it brings inconveniences. He said that the evidence is unclear whether such inconvenience results in poorer student achievement, although past reports detailing academic benefits compared to traditional schedules indicate more improvement is seen on year-round schedules.

And while he is willing to move away from multi-track, Payzant warned that at least six schools cannot be converted to other schedules for some years to come because their campuses have no rooms for additional bungalows even if the district had enough money to build them.

“I don’t think we will ever get to the goal” of all schools off multi-track, Payzant said. “Somewhere, we have to stop bad-mouthing multi-track and make it educationally sound. Otherwise, for some kids, we are saying that (education) has to be awful for five to seven years.

“Let’s try to make it work where there is no alternative.”

Payzant found support from Susan Davis, who noted that San Diego is moving away from the concept at the same time the Los Angeles city schools district this week decided to move toward a comprehensive multi-track system.

Davis also was bothered by the fact that construction of new bungalows--at a cost of $92,000 each-- to allow schools to avoid multi-track takes away money for more permanent solutions.

But trustees Ann Armstrong and Shirley Weber said that bungalows will be around for many years to come, and that the estimated $120,000 annual cost of running a multi-track school can be plowed instead into one-time bungalow construction.

However, Roache said that use of such operating funds to help build bungalows should be strictly limited to the number approved Tuesday. Payzant backed Roache, saying that, “If you go very far toward building new portables to keep schools off multi-track, you’re going to run out of capital funds and have no choice but to put in general funds.”

Added Roache: “The net effect would be down the line to cut programs to build buildings, and that is a bad precedent.”

Even with the decision to construct 25 new bungalows for next year and move 32 others, the board worried that it may not have enough portable classrooms to cover its short-term needs.

For example, parents and teachers from Torrey Pines Elementary in La Jolla objected to district plans to remove two of their bungalows and place them at schools in Southeast San Diego, saying that projections for enrollment declines at Torrey Pines are wrong. Removal of the bungalows will take away space used for enrichment programs vital to the school’s academic quality, they warned.

Trustees also discussed plans to reopen MacDowell Elementary in Clairemont and bus sixth-grade students from Sherman, Balboa and Brooklyn elementaries in Southeast--all badly over capacity even on multi-track--to the site for an indefinite number of years at a first-year cost of $473,000. (The district is trying to minimize inconvenience to the Associated of Retarded Citizens, which now uses MacDowell under a short-term lease for job training, by offering it use of trailers at the Mission Beach School, where the district runs developmentally disabled programs).

The total cost of portable construction and relocation of existing bungalows will top $3 million. Most of the money will come from the district’s capital fund.

Construction of at least one new elementary school and additions to several other elementary and secondary campuses--as permanent solutions--could run as much as $50 million. The capital fund is estimated to be no more than $10 million by next year.

Board president Kay Davis on Tuesday proposed hiring a real estate consultant to identify specific ways to raise funds, saying, “We are never going to qualify for the state building construction program and we are never going to pass a bond issue requiring a 66 2/3% yes vote.”

Davis listed in a memorandum more than two dozen possibilities for a consultant to investigate. Among them were: use of $12 million in voter-approved funds now targeted for new schools in Miramar Ranch North which may not be built because of a housing moratorium in the area; and sale or lease of strips of land at existing schools no longer needed for educational use to be used for single-family, condominium or commercial use depending on existing zoning.