IRVINE : Westpark to Open as Year-Round School

Trustees for the Irvine Unified School District voted unanimously this week to open Westpark Elementary School in July under a year-round calendar.

A survey conducted by the school district earlier this year showed that parents of three of eight children living in the Westpark village area favored sending their students to a year-round school. Westpark Elementary will be the district’s third school with a year-round schedule.

Under the year-round program, students attend for nine weeks and then take three weeks of vacation.

Parents of about 154 students from Westpark village will enroll their children at the new Westpark school, according to the mail-in survey. Other parents said they would prefer to keep their children at nearby Culverdale Elementary, which uses a traditional nine-month academic calendar.

The district is giving parents in Westpark--the city’s newest residential village, with about 5,000 homes--the option of choosing either school.

Still, if a small number of students enroll at Westpark in the coming months, the school might have to adopt a traditional calendar, Supt. David E. Brown said.

“We’re not going to run a program with just 100 students,” Brown said.

According to the district’s projections, Westpark and Culverdale elementaries both will enroll about 350 students from the Westpark area by 1994.

Westpark Elementary will open in July as a K-5 school. Sixth grade will be added next year. In 1993, the school board will decide whether to add seventh and eighth grades to the school.