Inglewood District Plans Pilot Program of 2 Middle Schools

Rejecting a plan to establish a middle school system to ease overcrowding in the Inglewood Unified School District, the school board this week instead voted to set up two middle schools under a “pilot” program.

The administrators had proposed educating all Inglewood sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders at four middle schools, a plan that angered parents who preferred to keep their children at neighborhood schools.

The district currently has 10 schools offering kindergarten through sixth grade, three that have kindergarten through eighth grade and two junior high schools for seventh- and eighth-graders. To streamline this system, district officials wanted to set up four middle schools and convert the others to schools for kindergarten through fifth grade.

But the school board voted 4 to 1 Wednesday night in favor of a hastily prepared plan for what was described as “pilot” middle school programs at Warren Lane Elementary School, which now has kindergarten through eighth grade, and George W. Crozier Junior High, now a school for seventh- and eighth-graders.

The board decided that the conversion will take place July 1, when the district completes its conversion to a year-round schedule. But it offered no details about the length of the pilot program.

Board member Lois Hill Hale, who supported the pilot program, said the district could not afford to take a chance by rushing too quickly into a districtwide middle school plan.

However, there was some confusion about the meaning of the term pilot. Board member Thomasina Reed said she believed the vote meant that Lane and Crozier would be permanently converted to middle schools.

“The success of the middle schools will be the litmus test for the other parents,” Reed said.

District spokesman Maurice Wiley said Thursday that district administrators had already begun working on plans for the pilot schools.

The board’s decision leaves intact the program of kindergarten through eighth grade at Frank D. Parent Elementary School, which draws students from Ladera Heights, one of the district’s most affluent residential areas.

Parents from the school complained that the administration had not allowed enough time to implement its plan, that a middle school system could imperil the academic standards at Parent school and that transportation arrangements were not in place.

One parent, Daniel Chen, was blunt about the administration plan, saying he had deliberately moved within the Parent school attendance boundaries so his children could enroll there.

“We may be forced to move out of the community if (districtwide middle schools are established),” Chen told the board. “And many parents will do the same thing.”

Under the administration plan, Parent would have had to take sixth-graders from another school next fall and, in the fall of 1993, would have only kindergarten through fifth grade.

Then, all its sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders would have been shifted to La Tijera School, which was to become one of the four new middle schools. In addition to Lane and Crozier, Albert Monroe Junior High would have become a middle school.

Larry Aubrey, the only board member to support the administration plan, argued in vain that the district needed a middle school program to ease overcrowding at elementary schools in central Inglewood.

“The conditions mandate that we do something now,” he said.

According to district figures, Inglewood Unified had 15,646 students in 1987. This year, there are 16,427 enrolled, and in 1996-97 the district expects to have 20,575 students.

Ronnie Blackwell, vice president of the Inglewood PTA Council, argued in favor of the administration plan, saying some schools were “busting at the seams.”

“We’re putting more kids in schools than we have space for,” he said.

“You have to realize there’s going to be changes,” Blackwell told board members and parents opposed to the administration plan.

District Supt. George McKenna tried unsuccessfully to stop the board from setting up a pilot program, instead of approving his plan. He said a sudden decision to designate Lane and Crozier for pilot programs would be arbitrary.

“The ramifications (of just two schools) have not been thought out clearly enough by staff right now,” he said.

Under the pilot program, students from six schools that are kindergarten to fifth-grade will feed the two middle schools. Students from Daniel Freeman, Bennett-Kew and William H. Kelso elementary schools will attend the new Lane Middle School, and students from Claude Hudnall, Oak Street and Beulah Payne elementary schools will go to the new Crozier Middle School.

Oak Street, Payne, Hudnall and Kelso are among the overcrowded schools in the central area of the city, where high density apartment buildings have replaced single family homes and in which large numbers of low-income, Spanish-speaking families have settled.

The number of children who are considered language impaired--meaning they do not speak English well--sometimes runs as high as 60% in central city classrooms.

As is the case with so many districts in Southern California, such demographic changes have strained resources and presented new teaching challenges. Many of the new residents are also low income.

Socioeconomic indicators are one way, devised by the state, to reflect the occupational level of parents. On a scale of 1 to 3, a 1 signifies unskilled workers; 2 signifies skilled or semiskilled; and 3 stands for semiprofessional and professional.

In the 1989-90 school year, socioeconomic indicators for third- and sixth-graders in the central city ranged from a low of 1.29 to a high of only 1.80.

Parent school on the other hand, is in an area that has remained demographically stable. Overcrowding is not a problem at the school, and data from state achievement tests in 1989-90 shows that English proficiency was not a problem there, either. At the Parent school, the socioeconomic indicator was a 2.79 for the third grade and a 2.68 for the sixth grade.