All-Year Plan for Burbank School Angers Some Parents

A proposal to put a crowded Burbank elementary school on a year-round class schedule has ignited a debate that extends beyond education to the city’s land-use policies.

Opponents of the year-round schedule said shortsighted, pro-development decisions in recent years by the Burbank City Council have left the Burbank Unified School District cornered--with too many kids and too little money.

While year-round schools are common in Southern California, Burbank has always maintained a traditional September-to-June schedule. But that may change next year at Joaquin Miller Elementary School in northeast Burbank, where the district is considering adopting a 12-month schedule.

A series of hearings in English, Spanish and Armenian on the still-sketchy proposal is to begin Oct. 12. A final vote on the issue will not be taken until November.

The proposal has angered many Miller parents who say the school is being singled out.

“We’re not opposed to the year-round schedule itself,” said Denise Wilcox, a vice president in the school’s parent-teacher association. “We’re opposed to the idea that Miller is the only school in the district that would go year-round. It’s simply unfair.”

Parents said that youth programs at parks, libraries and other city facilities would still be geared to a traditional schedule, leaving Miller out of sync with the community.

“Our kids will be the only ones in the city on that schedule,” said Wilcox, who works at a year-round magnet school in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Opponents want the district to ease crowding by shifting the boundaries of the school’s attendance area and transporting more kids by bus to other schools.

But district officials say busing is unfeasible because it would only create overcrowding at nearby schools, which are already at or near capacity.

Redrawing Miller’s boundaries, said district Supt. Arthur Pierce, would set off a domino effect that would ultimately force most students in the city to be bused to elementary schools outside their neighborhoods.

Eventually, he said, other schools or possibly the entire district may have to convert to a year-round schedule anyway as enrollment grows over the next 10 to 20 years.

Schools on a year-round schedule can accommodate more students because not all of them are in class at the same time. In most such schemes, students are divided into three or four groups with one of the groups always on vacation.

Miller is desperate for relief from crowding, whatever form it takes.

Designed in 1957 for about 400 students from kindergarten through sixth grade, the school now serves 800 in kindergarten through fifth grade and has had to add 13 portable bungalows. Those makeshift classrooms occupy most of the school’s playground and the district has gotten permission from the city for kids to use a small adjacent park for recess.

“By the year 2000, we are predicted to enroll a little over 1,000 students. We just can’t add any more bungalows,” said Principal Gail Copeland. “Where would we put them?”

To avoid overcrowding in the school’s outdoor eating area and playground, groups of students are scheduled at 10- to 12-minute intervals. As soon as one group wolfs down its lunch and heads out to play, another is sitting down to eat. By the time a third group begins eating, the first group is being hustled off the playground and back to classes.

“They come through in waves,” said instructional aide Bonnie Manning, trying to herd some rowdy second-graders back to class. “Every few minutes some kids finish while others are just starting recess.”

Critical parents say the source of the crowding at the school, which is located at Providencia Street and Kenneth Road, is the number of apartments the city has allowed to be constructed in the area over the past decade.

Miller serves an area bordered roughly by Olive Avenue on the northwest, the Golden State Freeway on the southwest and the Glendale border on the north and east. As apartment buildings replaced the area’s single-family houses, enrollment grew.

The population of the census tract where most Miller students live grew 17.4% during the 1980s while the citywide population grew only 10.7%, according to U.S. Census figures. Housing units in the area grew 13.5% during that period, only slightly more than the 11% growth in housing units citywide.

School officials say the fact that the area’s population grew faster than housing indicates that many of the apartments are being occupied by young families with children.

In response to the complaints of Miller parents, city officials have said they will consider making changes in the schedules of youth programs if the school switches to a year-round schedule.

But there are no plans to change the zoning in the area, which means that more apartments could still be built there. In fact, later this month, the City Council will consider loosening zoning rules to allow more apartments to be built citywide, Burbank planner Rick Pruetz said.

Much of the growth in enrollment at the school has been among immigrant students and now more than 40% of Miller students talk to their parents in a language other than English.

“We had 24 different languages at this school. It’s like a United Nations,” Copeland said. “We’re the most diverse school in the district.”

Both sides of the year-round school debate use the school’s diversity to bolster their position.

“By putting Miller on a year-round schedule it would further isolate Miller,” said Wilcox. “Most of Burbank is a monolingual white community. It’s de facto segregation. These students are isolated by language as it is.”

But Pierce said a year-round schedule would instead maintain a healthy balance of native English speakers and immigrants at the school.

“If we were to redraw the lines . . . we would end up with one school with students almost totally non-English speaking,” Pierce said. “We feel it’s important to have English-speaking students as models.”

The proposed shift has been the focus of several raucous public hearings before the Burbank school board. A delegation of angry parents led by Wilcox and her husband, Reid, have also taken their case to a recent City Council meeting.

“Ultimately the whole problem resides in the lap of the city council,” said Wilcox, 36, who grew up in the neighborhood and attended Miller. “They are accountable for the rapid growth of apartments in that area. They need to see what they have wrought.”

Copeland said she will gladly support whatever the school board decides to do. She just wants to have a more manageable number of students and more playground space.

“A year-round school would be very exciting,” she said. “But whatever they decide, it just can’t stay the same. We just can’t handle any growth.”

Public hearings on the proposed year-round schedule will be conducted at Joaquin Miller Elementary School in English on Oct. 12 at 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. and on Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. Hearings in Spanish will be Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Hearings in Armenian will be Oct. 15 at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m.