Schools Bulge Despite Yearlong Schedule : Education: Immigration and a high birthrate have nullified gains made in the switch to a year-round schedule in the early ‘80s.

While the debate over year-round schools rages throughout the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School district, many students, parents and school officials in the Southeast say they can hardly remember the days when their schools were out for the summer.

With the exception of Cudahy’s Clara Street Primary, a small kindergarten that is on a traditional schedule, all 24 Los Angeles Unified schools in Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, Huntington Park and South Gate have been on year-round schedules since the early 1980s.

Those Southeast schools, all part of Los Angeles Unified’s Region B, were the pilot schools for the year-round school program, with Cudahy’s Elizabeth Street Elementary breaking new academic ground when it converted to a year-round calendar in 1974.

Since then, most students, parents, teachers and administrators have readily adapted to students attending school in three shifts staggered throughout the year. Administrators said most people prefer the yearlong calendar to a traditional system. It holds down class sizes to an average of 27 students to one teacher, keeps children off buses and allows them to attend school in their own neighborhoods. Children and parents have better access to teachers all year, and students can retain more during vacation, because breaks are shorter.

But year-round schooling has not provided what most administrators had hoped: a solution to overcrowding.

“The situation in the Southeast is desperate,” said Gordon Wohlers, administrator of the district’s priority housing program, which finds schools for students. “There is no way year-round schools are going to solve the problem of overcrowding.”

Administrators said the continued high rate of immigration into the area, combined with a soaring birthrate, means that new schools must be opened on a year-round calendar, which makes room for up to a third more students.

School officials said if a new family with children moves into the Southeast, chances are that those children will find their neighborhood school has closed its doors to them, and they must ride a bus to schools as far away as the San Fernando Valley and the Sunland-Tujunga area.

Today, nearly every school in Maywood, Bell, Cudahy, Huntington Park and South Gate must bus students to other schools. According to the district, about 2,500 students are bused.

“The first busload I sent nearly broke my heart,” said Lupe Simpson, the principal of Nimitz Junior High in Bell. “But I can’t take 5,000 students, no matter what anyone tells me. It’s like having an apartment: You can only fit so many people into the apartment before you either build a bigger apartment or someone has to move.”

About 3,597 students attend Nimitz. Another 115 are bused to other schools.

Administrators foresee no end to the stream of students wanting to attend neighborhood schools, and the days when new schools might open on a traditional school schedule are long gone. To control growth, every school that opens in the next five years must open on a year-round schedule, officials said.

Fortunately, administrators said, just about everyone in the Southeast is used to it.

Willene Cooper, chairwoman of the legislative Committee on School Overcrowding in the Southeast, said: “Year-round is a way of life in the Southeast area. A lot of our children have never known anything else. We have found it to be very successful.”

But even with all its successes, the year-round calendar has barely put a dent in Southeast overcrowding, because enrollment figures have continued to climb.

“We have kids that are coming in too quickly. . . . We cannot catch up,” said Michael Rosales, principal of South Gate’s State Street School, now busing about 97 students to schools in Sunland, Tujunga, South Los Angeles and other Southeast schools.

Rosales said that with a year-round calendar, about 500 students can attend a neighborhood school rather than face busing. Had administrators in 1980 decided to wait a few more years to convert to year-round calendars, “we would have been educating children under trees,” Rosales said.

Administrators said the solution is to build more schools. “Everything in between is a Band-Aid,” said Maria Casillas, region B school superintendent.

Douglas Brown, the administrator for the district’s building services division, said three new elementary schools have been built in the last three years in Region B: Teresa Hughes in Cudahy and Montara Avenue and San Miguel elementaries in South Gate. All three operate year-round.

Montara buses about 70 students. San Miguel is nearly at capacity, and Teresa Hughes is at capacity because Park Avenue Elementary closed last summer, with its students now divided between Teresa Hughes and Elizabeth Street elementaries.

In addition to the new schools, Brown said, the district has added more classrooms at Fishburn and Loma Vista Avenue elementaries in Maywood and South Gate High and Liberty Boulevard Elementary in South Gate. But all four still bus children, with South Gate High busing one of the highest numbers of students; it sends 427 to other schools.

But Brown said the picture is not as bleak as it appears. Several new schools are planned.

If all schools remain on year-round schedules and there are no dramatic increases in enrollment, then all children will be able to attend schools in their neighborhoods within the next five years, he said.

Two elementary schools are being built in Bell and Huntington Park. Two more elementary schools are planned for Huntington Park, two for Bell and two for South Gate, in addition to the conversion of Cudahy’s Elizabeth Street Elementary School to a junior high and the building of a new high school in South Gate.

Brown said the high school project will take the longest. It is scheduled for completion in 1995-96.

Brown said the state has approved building the new schools, but the Legislature has not budgeted money for them.

The future of housing for students could lie in the passage of a proposition on the June ballot to add $800 million to the building budget. Brown said $6 billion is needed to build schools in California. Los Angeles Unified needs $1 billion.

Brown said going year-round and building more schools address just one part of the problem. “There has got to be more,” he said. “Cities need to enforce their zoning codes. They need to implement land utilization plans so we don’t have a single-family home leveled and replaced by an apartment complex, which will bring in more kids.”

Wohlers, administrator of L.A. Unified’s priority housing program, said if enrollment levels off and all the schools in the plans are actually built, then one day all students will attend classes in their neighborhoods.

But, he said, that is not much help now: “It is not like the problem is in the future. The problem is here today. It is here right now.”

Times staff writer Lee Harris contributed to this story.

SOUTHEAST AREA SCHOOLS IN L.A. DISTRICT

Number of Enrollment Children Bused BELL Bell High School 3,978 656 Corona Avenue Elementary 1,866 71 Woodlawn Avenue Elementary 1,390 20 CUDAHY Clara Street Primary Center* 117 0 Elizabeth Street Elementary 1,447 21 Park Avenue Elementary 1,026 0 Teresa Hughes Elementary 881 0 HUNTINGTON PARK Huntington Park High School 3,615 529 Gage Junior High 3,201 94 Nimitz Junior High 3,597 115 Middleton Street Elementary 2,047 7 Miles Avenue Elementary 2,831 182 MAYWOOD Fishburn Avenue Elementary 1,196 9 Heliotrope Avenue Elementary 1,285 23 Loma Vista Avenue Elementary 1,626 21 SOUTH GATE South Gate High School 3,910 427 South Gate Junior High 4,006 19 Bryson Avenue Elementary 1,126 0 San Miguel Elementary 694 0 Victoria Avenue Elementary 1,501 32 Montara Avenue Elementary 975 70 Stanford Avenue Elementary 1,760 0 Liberty Boulevard Elementary 1,507 91 State Street Elementary 1,573 43 San Gabriel Avenue Elementary 889 21

*Clara Street Primary Center, a small kindergarten located within Elizabeth Street School, is the only school in the above cities that follows a traditional school calendar. The rest are year-round.

Enrollment figures from October 1989. Busing figures from March 1990.

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District