9th Grades OKd for 4 Valley High Schools : Education: The board also authorizes the change for three Los Angeles campuses. The freshman class may begin next fall.

The Los Angeles Unified School District board on Monday authorized four San Fernando Valley high schools to take the first step toward changing from three-year programs to four years as part of a districtwide movement reshaping secondary education.

The unanimous decision authorized administrators at Chatsworth, Granada Hills, James Monroe and John F. Kennedy high schools to begin studying possible enrollment of ninth-graders beginning next fall. Three other Los Angeles high schools were also included in the decision.

Under the schedule adopted Monday, principals in the various high school “complexes,” comprising the high school and its feeder schools, will this month establish local task forces composed of parents, community members and staff employees to study the effect of conversion of the high school.

That includes replacing traditional junior high schools with middle schools incorporating the sixth through eighth grades. Elementary schools would run only through fifth grade.

The district has been shifting toward four-year high schools for several years, following studies that showed students were more suitably grouped in middle schools and four-year high schools than in junior and senior high schools.

Over the past several years, six of the Valley’s 18 high schools have changed over, although the initial motivation in some cases was to create additional seats in overcrowded elementary schools.

“Reconfiguration has been proven . . . to be the best educationally and instructionally for children,” said Joyce Peyton, director of school utilization for the district. She said pupils grouped under the new model are more alike physically, emotionally and academically. Ninth-grade students can begin their high-school program during what college application offices nationwide already consider to be the first year of high school, she said.

Over the next several weeks, the task forces will study whether reconfiguration, which necessitates increasing the staffs of high schools and decreasing those of elementary schools, is feasible for each complex, given the district’s current fiscal crisis and the credential differences between teachers of different grade levels. Findings will be presented by January, with recommendations on whether to go ahead scheduled for February.

Peyton said the four Valley schools that received the green light Monday were selected because they can accommodate ninth-graders.

“If I get a call tomorrow from the board saying we would have ninth-graders next year, we would have no problems housing them,” said Denny Thompson, assistant principal at Chatsworth.

Reconfiguration will also enable high schools to offer a wider variety of courses because of the increased number of students, he said.

Gary Turner, principal of Verdugo Hills High School, which added ninth-graders for the first time last year, said the new freshmen fit in well, academically and socially.

“I really think that ninth-graders are more mature now than when I went to school back in the ‘50s,” he said. Reconfiguration has “provided an outlet for them . . . They can handle it.”

Parents also welcomed a possible restructuring.

“I’m a hundred percent for it,” said Evelyne Reiss, president of Chatsworth’s Parent Teacher Student Assn. “For the kids that think ninth grade is still junior high and don’t care, this will be a shot in the arm.”