SANTA ANA : Intermediate Schools Begin New Schedule

Wearing knapsacks and clutching notebooks, hundreds of students hurried up McClay Street on Wednesday morning, not only to escape the rain but also to make it to their first day of school on time.

In a scene more reminiscent of fall that was repeated across town at Lathrop Intermediate School, students at Sierra Intermediate waved goodby to parents and joined the throngs of youngsters waiting in lines to get schedules of classes and books.

Although summer used to portend lazy days at the beach and family vacations, for these students it now signifies the start of another school year, following a Santa Ana Unified School District board decision to alleviate school crowding by switching Sierra and Lathrop to year-round instruction as of Wednesday. The change is one that many students and parents say they welcome.

District spokeswoman Diane Thomas said Lathrop and Sierra Intermediate, along with El Rancho Middle School in the Orange Unified School District, which opens later this month, are the first year-round intermediate schools in the county.

Students at the Santa Ana schools will attend classes 60 days followed by 20 days off, the same year-round schedule that the district’s 28 elementary schools now use. Because Sierra and Lathrop already have more students than they were designed to hold, the district board approved the switch to a year-round schedule, following the recommendations of a task force.

Chris White, 11, who attended a year-round elementary school, said he likes it because “I don’t get sick of school anymore. I used to all the time. It’d just drive me crazy.”

His mother, Susan White, added: “At first it’s annoying like any new thing. But it’s good for the kids because they don’t get as bored” during the long summer break.

However, she added that the down side of year-round school is that many sports camps and youth groups organize activities based on the traditional schedule with a three-month summer vacation, making participation for year-round students difficult, if not impossible.

Joe Tafoya, assistant superintendent of the secondary division, said the change was necessary because the campuses are currently so crowded that they cannot hold any more portable classrooms. Under the new schedule, only 75% of enrolled students are in school at one time.