Parents to Be Surveyed on Year-Round School Views : Education: Supporters say the change would improve students’ performance. Opponents see it as disruptive for families.

Parents of students in the Ventura Unified School District will be polled to see if they want their schools to operate year-round.

The survey, the culmination of a monthlong series of meetings for parents, teachers and other district employees, will be sent home today and Tuesday with thousands of schoolchildren. It will be distributed at 15 of the district’s schools that now are on a traditional September-to-June schedule.

With a year-round calendar, the number of instructional days would be 180, the same as the traditional calendar, but the school year would start on July 29 and breaks would be shorter and more frequent.

Parents of students at Cabrillo, Anacapa and Balboa middle schools and at 12 elementary schools will be asked whether they want the schools to change to the year-round calendar, said Michael Sellwood, director of administrative services. The deadline for returning the form is Friday, he said.

Some parents are adamantly opposed to the idea.

“For me, it breaks up the focus of the school year,” said Cheryle Estes, whose two children attend Junipero Serra Elementary School. “In September we should focus kids on having school as the priority, and in the summer months the priority is growth in other areas.”

Estes and other parents opposed to year-round school printed 4,700 flyers arguing for the traditional school calendar and began distributing them to parents last week.

Opponents argue that year-round school is disruptive to family summer vacations and causes scheduling conflicts in families in which some children attend traditional schools, or in which parents--particularly teachers--work on the traditional schedule.

Other parents, however, say they want year-round schools because of an educational theory that shorter breaks allow children to retain more of what they learn. During three-month summer vacations, the theory holds, many students forget a portion of the previous year’s lessons.

Judy McCarthy, president of the Lincoln School PTA, said she will vote in favor of a year-round program at her elementary school.

“The benefit children get from not being out of school for three months is wonderful,” said McCarthy, a teacher’s aide at Lincoln. She acknowledged, however, that the schedule might be more convenient for her than for other parents.

Both McCarthy and Estes said many parents are undecided about the year-round program because of uncertainty among district officials about how it would be affected by a controversial proposal to redraw school boundaries in the entire 15,000-student district. That proposal would move as many as half of the district’s students to different schools.

Three Ventura schools, E.P. Foster, Sheridan Way and Mound elementary schools, are already on a year-round schedule. Three more, Arnaz and Oak View elementary schools and De Anza Middle School, will convert to the calendar in July.

The program is not being considered at Buena and Ventura high schools, although a district report said they could be included in future years.

Countywide, the Fillmore Unified and Oxnard Elementary School districts are on year-round schedules.

The Ventura surveys will be tabulated on a school-by-school basis, Sellwood said. The results will be presented to the school board Feb. 12, and a board vote is scheduled for Feb. 26.