Dress Rehearsal for Hell

An invitation to a dress rehearsal for hell was issued to vast numbers of Valley students and teachers when the Los Angeles Unified School District announced implementation, commencing Aug. 19, 1990, of a year-round calendar.

Any resident can testify to the fact that Valley temperatures regularly soar above the 100-degree mark in August and September and are virtually always higher than those anywhere else in the city.

Yet, LAUSD chose to mandate a school calendar which begins in the hottest days of the year.

Hoping to mitigate the impacts of their decision and, perhaps, assuage a justifiably angry public, the best the district could muster was a soft pat on their own back for having installed air-conditioning in 154 multitrack schools.

They coupled this tenuous achievement with a promise to also air-condition, within a year, those schools converting to multitrack.

The fact is that the schools which are not converting to multitrack will be forced to endure the ravages of August and September unaided by the district.

This includes the vast number of Valley schools since they are predominantly single-track.

The whole reason for the year-round calendar is to alleviate overcrowding without having to build new facilities which would be unused once the boomlet spawned by the baby-boomer generation passes through the various levels of the public educational system.

Unfortunately, the calendar is of no use to the Valley since we do not suffer from appreciable overcrowding.

Why is this obviously harmful plan being implemented? The desire of the district to have one calendar instead of several.

The translation is “administrative efficiency”--to make it easier for themselves.

Because the system’s internal logic is breaking down, once again, perhaps Sacramento must take a look at how this behemoth conducts itself.

It should be law that no school shall be in session, in a non-air-conditioned facility, when the temperature equals or is greater than 90 degrees.

It should be law that if a non-air-conditioned school is in session on a day when the temperature exceeds 85 degrees, but is below 90 degrees, that students shall not be prohibited from bringing water into any classroom.

For those unable to provide water for themselves, the school shall make water available on a reasonable and regular basis.

MICHAEL J. MALAK

Northridge