800 Students Absent as Parents Protest Year-Round School : Education: About 80% of children are kept out of classes at Castelar Elementary in Chinatown. Boycott organizers fear the change to a multitrack schedule will hurt the quality of education.

About 800 students were absent from a Chinatown elementary school Friday, apparently to protest the school’s planned transition to a multitrack year-round schedule next year.

Principal Dore Wong confirmed that attendance at Castelar Elementary was down 80%. Wong said she was surprised by the magnitude of the boycott. About a third of the faculty members were also absent Friday, but the principal said she was not sure whether those absences were related to the boycott.

A boycott organizer said Castelar parents kept their children out of class because they feared the schedule change would hurt the quality of education at the school.

“Many years ago the school district had a choice to build more schools in the inner city--they chose not to,” said Chi Mui, whose 5-year-old son attends Castelar. “They have never done any studies to say multitrack year-round is a better way of educating our children. . . . We don’t feel there’s any reason to change.”

Mui echoed the concerns of many opponents of year-round school in the district, which turned to the new calendar for all schools this year to ease crowding.

But school board member Jeff Horton, whose district includes Castelar, said there is no alternative. “This boycott is not going to help their children,” Horton said. “The district has no choice. It’s not a disadvantage to be multitrack, (and) we have to have the space.”

Castelar officials say the school would be able to accommodate 320 more students--for a total enrollment of 1,350--if it switches to the multitrack system, in which students attend school on one of three or four different schedules. Horton said the extra spaces would be filled by Chinese-speaking students needing bilingual classes and others who currently are bused as far as the San Fernando Valley because their home schools are too crowded.

“For the kids riding an hour to school, I can’t deny even a few hundred of them a short bus ride. So, in fairness, I have to do this,” Horton said.

The Los Angeles school board decided in April, 1991, to put all district campuses into some form of year-round operation this year, with most campuses operating on a single track in which all students attend school at the same time. Another 217 schools are multitrack, enabling them to accommodate up to 33% more students, according to district officials. Approximately 60 more campuses are slated to go multitrack for the 1993-94 school year.

Castelar was to change to multitrack this school year but was given a one-year postponement at the request of parents.