2 More Inglewood Schools Rush to Get Ready for Year-Round Schedule

Year-round schools bring with them educational benefits and better use of campus facilities, but teachers, parents and administrators at two soon-to-be year-round schools in Inglewood are busy with the nitty-gritty consequences of the change.

Inglewood school board members, worried about congested campuses and enrollments that continue to rise, announced in March that year-round schedules would begin at Oak Street and Payne elementary schools in July. Once those year-round schools are operating, five of Inglewood’s 13 elementary schools will be on such schedules.

Since the board’s decision, others have been busy.

In homes, parents are lining up new baby-sitters and rearranging vacation schedules. In classrooms, teachers are clearing bulletin boards and drawers for colleagues who will begin sharing their teaching space. In school offices, administrators are working overtime arranging students on the new schedules, a seemingly endless game of musical chairs.

Year-round education means an end to a tradition that has been in place for generations: School starts in September, runs through Christmas, begins again in January and ends in June. It has always happened that way.

“It’s not just the school year that’s changing,” said one teacher, “it’s our lives.”

At an informational meeting at Oak Street Elementary School last Friday, parent James Krueger surveyed the color-coded posters hanging on the wall of the cafeteria explaining the four different scheduling options he has for his 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter.

“I don’t like any of them,” he grumbled.

“I like summer vacations,” he said. “That’s the way it was when I went to school. You develop a routine when the kids are in school for nine months and out of school for three months. With (year-round schools), you can’t develop a routine because the kids are always going in and out of school.”

Gwenda Wells, who enrolled her third-grade son and niece at Oak Street last week, said she expects to have trouble finding low-cost day care during the monthlong vacations scattered throughout the year.

“For a working mother, it’s not easy,” she said.

Randall Hazel, a working father, has a different problem. During the summer, he has custody of his three children from a previous marriage, who are living in Kansas City. His daughter in Inglewood is on a year-round schedule at Oak Street. Getting the two families together, he said, is going to be a nightmare.

For teachers, some of whom have spent 10 years or more in the same classroom, year-round education means that they will suddenly be sharing their rooms with other teachers. To ease possible tensions, teachers are planning to draw up agreements with other teachers on sharing bulletin boards, shelf space and supplies.

Teachers say they will have to rewrite lesson plans to fit the new schedules and revise their summer routines.

“We’ve been planning our lives around a (traditional) schedule,” said Cheryl Bell, president of the Inglewood Teachers Assn. “Then all of a sudden we’re working year-round. It’s a shock.”

Typically, districts allow a year or more of planning time before a school adopts a year-round schedule, said Charles Ballinger, executive director of the San Diego-based National Assn. of Year-Round Education.

But it will be a quick two-step in Inglewood.

The district has considered year-round schedules at the two schools for several years, but the final decision came in March. The last day of classes this school year is June 22. Less than two weeks later, year-round education will begin July 3.

The quick transition is keeping Oak Street Principal Yolanda Mendoza busy.

“Every minute of my day is spent on year-round,” she said last week.

When a problem comes up, she consults an administrator at one of the district’s three other year-round schools--Highland, Kelso and Woodworth--or one of the other Southern California school districts that have adopted year-round schedules.

One source of advice is Kelso Elementary School Principal Marjorie Thompson, who became the first Inglewood administrator to head a year-round school four years ago.

Thompson said the principal’s job, difficult enough in a traditional school, is “horrendous” in a year-round school because of the lack of summer planning time. When one set of students is ending classes, she said, another group is beginning.

Mendoza said her biggest challenge is scheduling teachers and students on the four different tracks (lettered A through D) that will stop and start at different times throughout the year.

Her priority is getting siblings on the same track so that families have the same vacation times. But she runs into other complications such as parents who baby-sit for other parents’ children and want all the children off simultaneously.

“It can be done, it can be done,” she said. “I keep telling myself it can be done.”

Ballinger knows it can be done. There are more than 400 year-round schools across the state, he said, and the number is growing annually.

Setting up the new schedules is always frustrating, he said, and concerns such as those raised in Inglewood are routine for schools adopting such a drastic policy change.

“Change is usually unpopular,” he said. “But sometimes change is worthwhile. In this case, change allows schools to house more students. It allows students to retain more of what they learn. It saves money.”