Vote on Shorter School Year Is Inconclusive

A recommendation to deny the Los Angeles Unified School District’s request to shorten its school year failed to muster enough votes Friday, but will be reconsidered by the State Board of Education next month.

The board voted 5 to 4 in favor of a motion to refuse the district’s request to shorten its second semester by eight days, which would save as much as $70 million, according to district officials. Six votes were needed for passage.

If the motion fails again to get the required number of votes, the district will automatically be granted its waiver for one year.

“We’re not totally excited but we’re not totally disappointed either,” said Ron Prescott, the district’s chief lobbyist in Sacramento. “We’re still in the game.”

Los Angeles schools Supt. Bill Anton traveled to Sacramento this week to seek support for a shortened calendar that could help the district cope with a fiscal crisis. The budget was pared this year by $400 million--much of which will be taken from employees’ salaries.

State law requires a minimum of 180 days of instruction except for severely overcrowded schools where students attend on a staggered, or “multitrack” schedule. For those schools, the calendar can be reduced by as many as 17 days, as long as the school day is extended by 33 to 39 minutes to allow for the same amount of time in the classroom.

Currently, 69 district schools follow a reduced 163-day calendar, Prescott said. A waiver of the state education code would allow the district to reduce the school year at all of its more than 600 schools.

The reduction could save as much as $70 million in employee salaries, reduced transportation costs and other daily expenses accrued when schools are open, said district budget director Henry Jones. Officials also contend that the shortened year would allow employees to offset proposed pay cuts of as much as 16.5% this year by taking more furlough days.

But ultimately a shortened calendar would have to be negotiated with United Teachers-Los Angeles, which has said it does not support the waiver. The union’s membership previously rejected a proposal to shave the school year by 17 days, and Wednesday its house of representatives turned down the eight-day proposal. UTLA President Helen Bernstein has said administration and extracurricular programs should be cut before employees are forced to give up pay.

State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig says he opposes shortening the school year and voiced his concerns to the state board. “These are rough times (and) the district made a good faith effort to try and do something about it,” Honig said in an interview after the vote. But “packing more minutes into those (172) days is not as educationally sound as 180.”

The budget concerns that spurred the waiver request also have triggered student demonstrations throughout the district, including four protests Friday at schools in San Pedro and the San Fernando Valley.

About 1,000 students at San Pedro High and more than 200 at Birmingham High in Van Nuys demonstrated on their campuses against cuts in education spending. Between 75 and 100 students at Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley walked off campus at the end of a nutrition break, and spent two class periods and their lunch hour waving placards in front of the school, according to Philip Nassief, an administrator in the district’s high schools division. At Sepulveda Junior High, about 25 students attempted to walk off campus, but most were stopped by school staff.