Newhall School District Weighs Establishing a Year-Round Schedule

Faced with soaring enrollment at already crowded schools, Newhall school authorities took preliminary steps Tuesday to convert two of their six elementary schools to year-round campuses beginning in the fall of 1993.

The Newhall School District Board of Trustees also began exploring the possibility of establishing a magnet program for gifted elementary school students at Newhall School in the fall, which would be the first program of its kind in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Although a formal vote on both issues is scheduled later this month, school officials Tuesday identified Wiley Canyon and Valencia Valley elementary schools as the most likely candidates for switching to multitrack, year-round schedules, under which students attend school throughout the year in staggered groups.

The district, already strapped for space for its 4,800 students, has considered going to a year-round school calendar for several years. In May, 1989, the board voted to convert Meadows elementary school to a multitrack campus but dozens of parents, outraged by the potential disruption of their summer vacation plans, forced school officials to scrap the idea several months later.

But Tuesday, Trustee Gonzalo Freixes characterized the crowding problem as “very serious” and said the projected influx of hundreds of new students over the next few years made year-round schools inevitable, especially after the bitter defeat twice last year of a $20-million school construction bond measure.

The board also discussed the possible creation of a magnet program for gifted students at Newhall School--a move that would provide 120 students from throughout the district with accelerated instruction. The district now offers a few hours of special instruction each week to about 175 children identified as gifted or talented.

“These kids are entitled to a challenging education,” said Freixes, an attorney who began spearheading the drive for a magnet program before his election to the board in November. Bright students should not be “held back, which is what the system currently does,” he said before the meeting.

Under a proposal submitted by the Society to Advance Gifted Education, an organization founded three years ago by Freixes and other Santa Clarita Valley parents, the district would establish four special classes at Newhall School, one of the least crowded campuses in the district. The program would cater to gifted children in the second through sixth grades.

Freixes said the program would also help integrate the school, which has more minority children than any other campus in the district. A magnet program would help attract Anglo students to the school so that the proportion of minority students would be closer to that of the district as a whole--about 28% to 30%, he said.

Joan Hasler of the Newhall Teachers Assn. told the board that about 100 teachers were polled on the subject and more than 80 were opposed to the magnet program or undecided. She said many teachers were concerned about what standards would be used to determine which children would qualify. She said they favor more study and regard establishment of a program in the fall as too hasty.