Lack of Legal Notice Jeopardizes Inglewood Year-Round Schools : Education: School board will take up the issue at a special meeting Wednesday night.

A plan by the Inglewood Unified School District to create two middle schools and add more year-round elementary schools July 1 may be in jeopardy because the district failed to publish legal notices about the new schedule.

A special meeting of the school board will be held Wednesday night in an attempt to resolve the problem, which was raised by teachers and parents.

“Right now we feel chagrined,” school board President Joseph Rouzan Jr. said.

Rouzan said he did not understand why the legal notices announcing the change were not published. The state Education Code requires districts switching to year-round schedules to publish the notices for three consecutive weeks by Nov. 1 of the previous school year.

School spokesman Maurice Wiley said the primary concern involves the district’s plans to open two middle schools and put more elementary schools on a year-round schedule this summer. The moves were made to ease severe overcrowding of elementary schools in the central part of the city.

He said schools will not be able to accommodate the crush of children next year if the opening of the middle schools and the year-round schedules are scrapped. There were to be about 10 year-round schools starting in July.

The district began moving to a year-round schedule in 1986. Two weeks ago, the board voted to open two middle schools--Warren Lane and George W. Crozier schools--that would be on year-round schedules starting July 1. The middle school concept is controversial among Inglewood parents.

If there is a court challenge, it will rest on the question of whether a district is required to publish legal notices every time it moves another school to a year-round schedule, according to Wiley and David Whittaker, an official with the Inglewood Teachers Assn.

Wiley said that in 1986, when the district first began moving schools to year-round schedules, regular notices were published. However, he said, notices have not been published each time a new school goes year-round.

Whittaker said new notices are required whenever a school is added to the schedule.

It is unclear who is mounting the challenge to the year-round schedule, but officials said it may be tied to teacher contract negotiations. Inglewood teachers have been without a contract for more than a year.

Charlotte Bell, a member of the PTA Council at Inglewood High School, said the teachers asked parent groups to challenge the district on its failure to publish the notices and its failure to apply for state grant money to help pay for the transition to a year-round schedule.

Whittaker said that it is the parents who are challenging the district and that if there is legal action, the parents, not the teachers union, will pay the court costs.