Elementaries May Teach Year-Round

Five Glendale elementary schools should begin year-round education in 1991 with a trimester calendar designed to relieve overcrowding, school district officials recommended this week.

Officials told Board of Education members Tuesday that Balboa, Columbus, Keppel, Mann and Marshall elementary schools should implement a year-round schedule in July, 1991, with Edison, Jefferson and Muir elementaries to follow suit in July, 1992.

The board will vote June 5 whether to adopt the panel’s recommendations.

Enrollment projections, however, show that even with year-round schedules, the first five elementary schools listed will be overcrowded again within two years. Mann Elementary, in fact, will exceed its campus capacity by about 37 students even as the year-round schedule goes into place.

“If enrollment continues at the rate it’s been going, some of those schools will already be up to capacity” after a year-round schedule is implemented, said David Kanthak, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services.

The plan, designed by a panel of administrators, teachers and parents, took into account school growth patterns through 1994. It recommended the district employ a multi-track calendar, much like a university’s trimester system: Four “tracks” of students would attend class for 60 days each, then vacation for 20 days.

There would always be three tracks in school and one on vacation--allowing a school to increase its capacity by 25%.

The plan established certain guidelines that would trigger year-round education in schools expected to become overcrowded. But it also specified that schools wishing to voluntarily switch to year-round classes could do so with the approval of a majority of parents.

The year-round calendar would allow all students the same two weeks off during Christmas break. It also would allow each student one month off during the summer, said Linda Burlison, a PTA representative and parent on the panel.

The five schools scheduled to begin the calendar in 1991 will be equipped with air-conditioning, Kanthak said. But money may be a problem, he said. The state has encouraged schools to switch to year-round education by promising to pay for air-conditioning. But those funds are not available until after a school actually goes onto a year-round calendar.

This means the Glendale district will have to pay the $1.5 million needed to air-condition the first five schools, then hope the state has the money to reimburse it, Kanthak said.

“We’re stuck either way,” he said. “We don’t really have a choice. But we’re hoping we get reimbursed.”

Student enrollment has jumped 22% since 1985, mostly in southern Glendale’s elementary schools. The student population, now about 24,500, may reach 28,300 by 1992, district officials have said.

The board in April approved continuation of short-term measures to relieve overcrowding through the 1990-91 school year, until long-term methods, such as the year-round calendar, could begin in July, 1991.

Short-term measures include capping enrollment at certain overcrowded schools and busing new students to less crowded schools, which officials said has not been popular among parents.

Year-round education was the leading long-term measure among four approved last month by the board. The other three--boundary changes, construction of classrooms and the transfer of ninth-graders to senior high schools--also will be implemented during the next three years, officials said Tuesday.

In 1992, 59 classrooms will be added to Glendale and Hoover high schools, which will take in 1,400 ninth-graders. That reconfiguration is expected to prevent, at least temporarily, local junior highs from needing to switch to a year-round schedule, panel members said.

Kanthak said year-round classes also are expected to eliminate the need for portable classrooms on elementary school campuses that adopt the calendar, as well as busing of students.

At Marshall Elementary, for example, some 1,100 students are expected in September, 1991, on a campus built for 930. With a year-round calendar, district officials said they expect that the school’s capacity would increase to about 1,160. More than a dozen portable classrooms could be removed from the playground and more than 60 students living in the Marshall area would no longer have to be bused to Glenoaks Elementary School.

“I think it’s a strategy that will do the most to help us,” said Nancy Jude, Marshall’s principal. “We’ve been suffering a long time. It’s like a light at the end of a tunnel.”

But according to district projections, busing may begin again in 1992 at Marshall and Mann elementary schools, despite the year-round schedule. District officials warned board members on Tuesday that they still are uncertain about future enrollment, and that plans to deal with overcrowding could change.

“It’s critical that we don’t look at this as a static document, but as a working document,” said Supt. Robert A. Sanchis. “The main thing right now is to find a place for everyone to sit down.”

During the next several months, a variety of committees will be appointed to try to solve the challenges posed by year-round education, said James McGlashan, the district’s director of testing, evaluation and career evaluation.

Each school implementing a year-round schedule also will establish its own committee to deal with the changes, he said.

“A lot of it will be mechanical things people don’t think about,” McGlashan said. “What about custodians? When do they deep-clean? When do you give the principal a vacation? How do we work with community agencies? All these nice little things have to be resolved before a school can run smoothly on a year-round schedule.”

Teacher representatives will meet with Sanchis on Friday to discuss how year-round education will affect their contracts, said Charles Tubbs, a member of the Glendale Teachers Assn. and math teacher at Glendale High School.

Members of the panel that recommended the year-round calendar said they expected little opposition from parents, but realize parents may be nervous about the change.

“If you haven’t researched it, you don’t know what’s going to happen, and what you don’t know about it scares you,” said Burlison, a parent on the panel. “But I’ve seen that year-round has a lot of really good options.”