Schools to Go on All-Year Schedule : Pleasant Valley: Trustees order a study on the plan, scheduled to begin in 1993. System is meant to ease crowding.

After failing to win voter approval of two construction bond measures last year, the Pleasant Valley School District plans to begin a year-round program to ease crowding in its 13 schools.

In a 3-2 vote late Thursday, the board of trustees directed district administrators to come back in the fall with a report on how the year-round system will work when it is scheduled to be launched in September, 1993, in the 6,700-student district.

The board also tentatively decided to change two-year intermediate schools into three-year middle schools, but it will re-examine that issue in the fall.

Year-round systems--which are already in use in Oxnard Elementary, Fillmore Unified and some Ventura Unified district schools--allow more students to attend one school by placing them on different tracks and staggering vacations throughout the year.

“As an educator, I believe in it strongly,” said Trustee Dolores Rains, Spanish department chairwoman at St. John’s Seminary College. “I think it’s time to put the agricultural calendar to bed.”

Some Camarillo parents have voiced concerns, however, that children in the same family may be placed on different tracks, especially those with older children whose high school is part of a separate school district.

“I think it’s going to be hard for working moms,” Pat King, a mother whose child attends Camarillo Heights School, said Friday.

The board vote, which followed 2 1/2 hours of sometimes hostile debate, also called for opening a new elementary school at a site on Woodcreek Road, even if it is built entirely of portable classrooms. About 50 parents and teachers stayed to hear the vote, which came shortly before midnight.

Middle schools use special programs and curriculum aimed at students who are growing from childhood into adolescence. In Camarillo, formation of middle schools could involve transferring students and closing at least one elementary school, according to a plan developed by the district facilities committee.

Trustee Leonard Diamond recalled that three years ago, his proposal for a year-round middle school drew only laughter and dismissal. Most school districts in Ventura County have established middle schools, and the Oxnard School District has year-round middle schools.

Trustee Jeanette L. McDonald, head of the facilities committee, recommended a plan to create middle schools. Officials said the plan, however, would only pave the way for year-round schools.

Rains made a motion to prepare to start year-round schools even before Associate Supt. Howard Hamilton had a chance to review a 50-page plan put together by the facilities committee. The committee of parents, teachers, administrators and McDonald was formed two years ago to find ways to ease crowding throughout the district.

McDonald voted against Rains’ motion, as did board President Leonard Caligiuri. Ricardo Amador, the board’s newest member, sided with Rains and Diamond, the board’s longest-serving members.

But McDonald said Friday that she voted against Rains’ motion because she believed it was vague and lacked a call for definitive action. “We’ve studied it enough and we need to make a decision,” she said. “To prepare does not mean to implement.”

Under the committee’s plan, the middle schools would be at Las Colinas School, with students initially in grades four to eight and later six to eight, and at Los Altos and Monte Vista intermediate schools.

Parent Betsy Nowrasteh presented the board with a petition, signed by 150 people, supporting year-round school. “Their minds are open to it,” she said.

But some parents who have been following the board’s activities in recent months said they were surprised at the sudden move toward year-round schools.

“I didn’t think it would ever come to this,” said parent Pat King, who said she would only oppose year-round schools if one part of the community had them. “I didn’t realize this was something in the near future for Pleasant Valley School District.”

Parent Kathy O’Riley, whose two children attend Las Colinas School, said she had no objection to a year-round program and could see only benefits. “I’m a flight attendant; I have no weekends,” she said. “My life is an almost constant rotation of routes.”

Some parents at the meeting objected to a proposal to put only some of the district’s 13 schools on the year-round system, saying it would divide the community.

But Hamilton warned that all schools could not start the revised schedule at once, and that year-round school would have to be phased in.

The idea to build Woodcreek School out of portable classrooms was proposed by two parents at a recent board meeting.

Both bonds that voters rejected last year--one for $75 million and another for $55 million--would have paid for the construction of the new $6-million Woodcreek School as well as renovations to the district’s aging schools.

Hamilton said the cost to build a new school out of portable classrooms would be close to $2 million if Pardee Construction offers to grade the site, or $3 million without Pardee’s help. The district has collected $1.8 million in developers’ fees for the new school.