SANTA ANA : Year-Round School Plan Wins Support

A proposal for Sierra and Lathrop Intermediate schools to adopt a year-round curriculum received support from parents and teachers at a public hearing Tuesday night.

More than 70 people attended the Santa Ana Unified School District hearing at Sierra Intermediate School, applauding each of the four people who spoke to the board in support of the plan. The district will not make a decision on the proposal until January.

Sierra teacher Glen Ashcraft called year-round schools “the wave of the future” and said he supports the proposed change “as long as it’s handled in a sensitive way.”

The district report presented Tuesday shows that enrollment at Sierra will increase 31% by the 1995-96 school year, while enrollment at Lathrop will jump 47%. The move to year-round education at the schools would reduce crowding and eliminate the need for busing more than 200 children a day from Lathrop to other schools.

The schedule change would save $77,000 and eliminate the need for more portable classrooms, according to a report by a committee formed to study year-round scheduling. However, the change also would require the district to hire more teachers.

Echoing one parent’s comment to the board, Janet van Emon, a Sierra teacher who works with pupils with below-average reading skills, said she thought a year-round program would help the children retain knowledge.

“Now students go home for summer and forget,” she said. “If you spend September and part of October (going over material again), you’re never going to make the double or triple progress you hope to” with students who read below their grade level.

The committee report also said the district’s task force on year-round education has tentative plans to study adopting the changes at the district’s other intermediate schools, including Carr, Spurgeon and Willard schools starting with the 1992-93 school year, and MacArthur and McFadden schools in 1993-94.