Long Winter Hiatus Disruptive for Students : Education: School officials bemoan the loss of momentum as classrooms get back into action. Sharp drops in enrollment force a midyear reshuffle. The bright side? Teachers and pupils are refreshed, and discipline problems are at a minimum.

After a two-month winter break many parents termed a child-care disaster, most Los Angeles public school students are back in the classroom. Now some educators are crying “disaster” too as they strive to get kids back on track, review already forgotten lessons and revive such now-alien concepts as homework.

“It’s a problem--the loss of momentum and need for review,” Palisades High School Principal Gerald Dodd said last week. “Adults (teachers) liked that break, it gave them a chance to catch their breath and reassess where they are going. And the kids liked it too. But I’m not sure . . . it hasn’t been costly to their educational development, especially in languages and sequential math.”

Worse, scores of junior and senior high school students did not return--because they either moved or dropped out, and dozens of children expected on buses from overcrowded inner-city elementary schools never materialized. The result? Teachers and students are again being reshuffled, midyear.

These are the consequences of a school calendar in which all students on the Westside get a winter break and an abbreviated summer vacation.

A Times survey of about half a dozen Westside school principals found that enrollments are significantly down and that the long hiatus has been disruptive for many returning students, who are having to review subjects they supposedly had already mastered. However, the principals added that both teachers and students appear refreshed by the leisurely break and that the discipline problems some thought would be inevitable when eight weeks of freedom abruptly ended and the kids had to settle down again are minimal so far.

Westside school board member Mark Slavkin said feedback he has received about the controversial break is “significantly mixed.”

“Some parents were frustrated, said it was a disaster, that their kids had nothing to do, while others, who used it for family vacations or enrichment programs, say it was the best thing since sliced bread,” Slavkin said.

“Teachers and principals are split too. Some say they are frustrated at having to start all over, while others report that they’re right on track (with their lesson plans.)”

Slavkin had said before the intercession that his greatest fear was that marginal students faced with failing grades, long bus rides to school, and time on their hands would either find jobs or become passive dropouts just by not coming back.

At Venice High, Assistant Principal Bud Jacobs said that 30 students did not return, which will probably mean the loss of one teacher come Friday, the day the district has set for finalizing enrollments and adjusting classes accordingly. Disruptive midyear adjustments were eliminated in 1989 but were reinstituted this year because of the school budget crisis.

Even so, Jacobs said, Venice had been especially concerned about the impact of the break on its English-as-a-second-language students and was pleased to find that that population has remained relatively stable. “We were worried that many of them would go to Mexico during the break and not come back, but that did not materialize,” he said.

Palisades High lost 45 students, which will make it necessary to cut auxiliary periods and rearrange student schedules, although no teachers are expected to be transferred, Principal Dodd says. That might not sound serious, he said, but cutting periods out of a program can cause big problems:

“Say you have five chemistry classes, with 30 students in each,” Dodd explained. “If you have to cut one, that means 30 will have to go into one of those other four. But a kid may not be able to switch, because of a sport, advanced placement English, honors French (or other classes offered at only one time.) Where that is the case, probably we would have to say he can’t take the second part (of chemistry), or may have to go to summer school.”

About 20 students dropped out of University High, according to Principal Jack Moscowitz, most of whom moved out the district.

Even middle schools and junior highs are affected. At Paul Revere Middle School, for example, Principal J. D. Gaydowski said that 19 youngsters have “disappeared” since late December, whereas normally no students are lost over the brief Christmas vacation. He said that the total number lost is no higher than usual at the midyear point, but that they usually disappear in small numbers at a fairly consistent rate throughout the first months of school.

Since two teachers have just retired, Revere will not lose any others next week. But, Gaydowski said, they will not be replaced and the collapsing of their classes will be “disruptive, although we are trying to go for minimum damage.” He explained that, under district formulas, if Revere could regain just eight students in the next week, no class changes would be necessary. Otherwise, a seventh-grade teaching team--one of many innovations implemented this year in Revere’s newly reconfigured middle school--will have to be broken up, and students reassigned, Gaydowski said.

The news was good in at least two Westside schools, however. Hamilton High’s enrollment, which had fallen by nearly 50 students by the end of December, is back up, and Principal Jim Berk says five new teachers are being added. And at Mark Twain Junior High, where enrollment had fallen by nearly 60 youngsters by Christmas, Principal Gwen Doble said her student adjustment counselor had rounded up and returned all but 14 by last week.

At the elementary level, classes normally are reshuffled only once during the school year. However, the school board voted last month to eliminate teachers assigned to schools that anticipate receiving large numbers of children on buses from overcrowded “sender” schools as the school year progresses.

So last month, 22 such teachers lost their posts, mostly in the Harbor area, after tallies showed that many schools did not have enough bused students to justify keeping the waiting teachers. Although several Westside schools were threatened, in the end only Short Avenue Elementary lost one of these teachers, according to Joyce Peyton, who heads the district’s office of school utilization.

Peyton said children are continuing to dribble into already-jammed schools but must now be redirected to other schools that have a few spaces here or there. The break appears to have had a positive impact on most teachers and students. Twain’s Doble, who formerly headed a year-round junior high in southeast Los Angeles, noticed a night-and-day difference in her staff: “They were tired and dragging before the break; they have come back refreshed and ready to go.”

So too have the students. Grades were mailed out during the break. Failing students were able to attend remedial winter school classes, and advanced-placement students were offered tutorials. Instead of coming back after Christmas for finals, they returned last month to a brand-new semester, a chance to start fresh, noted Hamilton’s Berk.

Some schools built several weeks of review into their schedule; others appear to have found extensive repetition unnecessary.

Revere math teacher Elsie Bree, for example, said she did one week of review before plowing ahead. “Some don’t remember from day to day,” she sighed, adding that she notices little difference before and after the intercession. With a bit of memory jogging, she found, many who appeared to have lost ground at first would suddenly say, “Oh, yeah, now I remember.”

Others found the start-up too slow for their liking. A group of enthusiastic fourth-graders at Palisades Elementary complained that their first three weeks back at school have consisted largely of, in the words of one, “review, review and more review. Boring.”

As for discipline problems, they haven’t surfaced yet. Resumption of school was described as “calm” by Palisades’ Dodd, “the quietest start in my six years here” by Hamilton’s Berk, and “the smoothest, most relaxed opening we’ve ever had” by University’s Moscowitz.

A gang shooting in a neighborhood park 10 days ago sparked one day of fights at Mark Twain and Webster, Doble said, adding that, otherwise, referrals to the principal’s office have not increased.

So parents, teachers and students appear to have survived the widely opposed break, despite a shortage of appropriate child care and youth activities, bad weather, schedule conflicts between Los Angeles public schools and neighboring public and private schools, and terminal boredom within some age groups.

“The jury is still out in terms of evaluating the intercession, and getting a real handle on what impact it has had,” Slavkin noted. Some schools are planning assessment surveys to make it work better next time, given that the traditional school calendar has been abolished--probably forever--from the troubled city school system here.

Ideally, from an educational standpoint, Slavkin said, the school year would be increased from its current 178 days (Japanese students attend about 240 days a year) and broken up by several two-week breaks.

“Children are better served, from the standpoint of safety, education and development as human beings, by being socialized in a school environment,” he said, even though an expanded school year is not an option in the current budget situation. Every day of school in Los Angeles costs more than $7 million in teachers’ salaries alone.

“The issue is backwards: We shouldn’t be hung up on how much vacation students need, but on how much they should be in school,” Slavkin said, noting that the new calendar actually neither adds nor subtracts days in school.