ANAHEIM : School Enrollment Increasing Rapidly

Enrollment in the already overcrowded Anaheim City School District continues to grow rapidly, but it will be at least six years before the state will be able to pay for new schools to house the overflow, according to a new district report.

The report said enrollment in the 14,900-student district has increased by an average of 759 students each year for the past three years. The trend is expected to continue through at least 1996.

To handle the additional students, the district will have to consider placing more of its campuses on a year-round schedule, splitting some existing campuses and placing portable classrooms on playgrounds, the report said.

The elementary school district, which handles kindergartners through sixth-graders, already has nine of its 21 campuses on a year-round schedule and 31 portable classroom trailers scattered throughout the district to ease overcrowding.

“Our enrollment began increasing about five or six years ago, but we were able to fill up some open space that we had,” said Maria-Elena Romero, the district’s director of strategic planning. “It became a crisis three years ago when we ran out of space.”

The district has applied to the state for funding to build five new schools that would house 700 students each. Each would cost $18.2 million, and it is unlikely the district will receive the money before 1997, according to the report.

State education officials said school enrollment is increasing by 800,000 students annually statewide and that $12 billion would have to be spent over the next five years to build enough schools to keep pace.

“It’s obvious the state doesn’t have that kind of money,” said Henry Heydt, assistant director of facilities for the state Department of Education.

Fees charged by the Anaheim district to developers who build new houses will raise only 14% of the needed money, the report said.

It added that 75% of the increased enrollment comes from new students moving into existing homes that previously did not house children, rather than from new development.

The temporary schools could be built on some of the district’s larger campuses, Romero said. The temporary school would be placed at one end of the existing school’s playground. The two schools would share the playground that was left.

“That set-up is not really acceptable to the state Department of Education, but it might be approved on a temporary basis,” she said.

She said that it is unlikely that temporary schools could be erected on vacant lots because there are few in Anaheim that are large enough and that the district could not afford to buy them anyway.

Romero said that the district may put as many as four more schools on year-round schedules but that it is unlikely that all schools will be converted to that calendar.

“The Board (of Education) wants to keep some schools on the traditional calendar so parents who don’t like year-round will have a choice,” she said.

Year-round schools ease overcrowding by rotating students’ vacations and keeping the campuses open in the summer, allowing about 25% more students to be taught per school. In Anaheim, students at year-round schools are divided into four groups. While three groups are in session, the other group and its teachers are on a four-week vacation.

When that group returns, another takes its vacation. By the end of the school year, year-round students have received 36 weeks of instruction and 16 weeks of vacation, including Christmas and spring breaks, just as students on the traditional September through June calendar do.