PIERCE COLLEGE : Group Calls for Calendar Change

The American Federation of Teachers has proposed that the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees change the calendar now being followed at Pierce College and its eight other schools to one more in line with nearby four-year colleges and universities.

Students at most four-year institutions are on vacation until the spring term begins in February, while those at the two-year community colleges are preparing to take finals for fall semester classes, AFT officials said.

The lack of coordination in the schedules often inconveniences students transferring to four-year schools from community colleges, they said.

Last fall, for example, finals week at Pierce College overlapped with the first week of classes at Cal State Northridge.

“The majority of our students go to CSUN, so we should be more in line with CSUN,” said Dan Means, Pierce College president.

Currently, Pierce’s fall semester begins in mid-September and ends in late January, with a two-week December break.

“It’s kind of a hangover in the middle of the semester,” said Tom Kramer, journalism instructor and AFT negotiator.

“When you get off for break, you don’t rest,” said Sam Muhayimana, Associated Students Organization president. “All you think about is finals.”

Craig Meyer, a geology professor, disagreed. “People don’t like the hole because they use it wrong,” he said, adding that students should use the winter break to catch up on their studies.

But Meyer said he is upset that two weeks of instruction are lost because of the break. “Whenever they institute these schedules, they cut days,” he said. “As a teacher, I need more days.”

Mike Cornner, a journalism instructor, said he thinks the semesters at Pierce and the other Los Angeles community colleges are too long. “You have to go to school longer to get the same amount of credit,” he said.

If classes require more days to teach, they should be split into two parts, Cornner said.

The community college district changed its schedule to coincide with four-year institutions in 1984. But the community colleges “had a tremendous loss of students” and returned to their current calendar, said Trustee Harold Garvin.

Garvin said the biggest loss of students occurred in minority communities where single parents relied on community colleges to be in sync with the Los Angeles Unified School District schedule. “Parents went to school while their children were in school,” he said.

However, Garvin said, because of the trend toward year-round schools, that should no longer pose a problem.

If approved by trustees by this summer, the earliest the new schedule could be implemented would be in the fall of 1992.