School Officials Put Off Vote on Shifting Grades : Restructuring: Parents oppose district’s proposal for changes at Eagle Rock High and three elementary schools, citing dangers to children.

Los Angeles school district officials have postponed a proposal to restructure grade levels at Eagle Rock High School and three elementary schools this fall, after hundreds of parents complained their children would be moved to a more dangerous school outside their community.

Parents opposed the plan to transfer sixth-graders from Eagle Rock Elementary School to Irving Junior High School in Glassell Park, which would be converted to a middle school for sixth- through eighth-graders.

Also under the proposal, sixth-graders at Dahlia Heights and Rockdale elementary schools would have graduated to seventh grade at Burbank Junior High in Highland Park, instead of to Eagle Rock High School, which now is attended by students in grades seven through 12.

The seventh and eighth grades then would have been phased out at the high school, making it a four-year school for students in grades nine through 12. Marshall and Franklin high schools also would take ninth-graders.

At a three-hour public hearing last week that drew nearly 700 people, many parents said they believed Eagle Rock sixth-graders would be exposed to greater gang activity and drug sales in the neighborhood surrounding Irving Junior High School.

Others criticized district officials for introducing the plan to the Board of Education before consulting with the schools or the public.

“The procedure stinks,” said one father, whose child attends Eagle Rock Elementary. “There has to be a better way than interrupting our small-town, naturally integrated community.”

After the hearing, Board of Education member Leticia Quezada, whose district includes Eagle Rock, directed Supt. William Anton to remove the proposal from this week’s board agenda.

Quezada directed staff members to form a task force with school administrators, teachers and parents to hammer out a compromise plan, said her spokesman, Ernie Delgado.

“That should give the community a chance to put some input into a plan as drastic as this,” Delgado said.

Quezada’s action also delayed a vote on a related plan to reconfigure eight elementary schools that feed into Irving Junior High School. Under that proposal, Allesandro, Atwater, Delevan Drive, Dorris Place, Fletcher, Glassell Park, Glenfeliz and Toland Way elementaries would become K-5 schools. Sixth-graders would transfer to Irving.

That plan has received little opposition and most likely will be implemented by September, district officials said. It is expected to come back to the board for a vote in about two months, Delgado said, along with a new alternative for Eagle Rock, Dahlia Heights and Rockdale elementaries.

Both proposals were part of a comprehensive plan introduced in December aimed at reducing classroom overcrowding, which has affected elementary schools throughout the district.

But the proposals also were part of a long-term plan to reconfigure all of the district’s 49 high schools, including the junior high and elementary schools that feed into them, said John Liechty, the district’s administrator of middle/junior high schools.

Reconfiguration moves sixth-graders to junior high schools, which become middle schools for students in grades six through eight. High schools become four-year schools for students in grades nine through 12. Elementary schools serve students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

Many educators believe reconfiguration provides better instruction and groups students together more appropriately than the traditional grade-level structure, said Joyce Peyton, administrator of the district’s Priority Housing Program, which designed the comprehensive plan to reduce overcrowding.

She predicted that Eagle Rock parents may approve the original reconfiguration proposal after meetings between the community and task force are held.

“They just didn’t understand,” Peyton said. “We haven’t had that kind of reaction to reconfiguration in the past.” At last week’s public hearing, several parents of Irving students said they welcomed Irving’s conversion to a middle school. They defended the junior high, saying Principal Thelma Yoshii and other administrators have improved safety on and around the campus.

For parents of students at Eagle Rock Elementary and Eagle Rock High schools, the issue has not centered on overcrowding or the merits of reconfiguration, but on the safety of Irving and the desire to keep children at neighborhood schools, said Cathy Ellingford, a community activist who led opposition to the plan.

Parents also have been angry that district officials attempted to push through their proposal without consulting the schools or their communities, Ellingford said.

“The big concern was that there were a lot of unanswered questions,” Ellingford said. “The proposal seemed fraught with problems, and no one talked to parents about what was going to happen.”