L.A. District’s Shortened Semester Rescinded : Education: State board cites minimal savings and expense of having employees draw unemployment. School officials and parents must scramble to revise schedules.

The Los Angeles Unified School District will have to scrap its plan to cut eight days from the spring semester after the State Board of Education on Friday withdrew its support for the controversial scheme.

Contending that district officials misled the state board about savings the plan would generate, the board voted unanimously to rescind a waiver of state policy it had granted in October that would have allowed the shortened school year.

About 200 of the district’s 700 schools resumed classes this week on the new schedule, which extends the school day about 30 minutes to make up for instructional time lost through the eight-day reduction. The remaining schools were to begin the schedule next month.

Now, “it’s back to the drawing board,” said Richard Mason, chief attorney for the district. School officials will work through the weekend to revise bus schedules and prepare letters notifying parents and teachers of the schedule change, he said.

A bigger problem for officials will be adjusting the work schedules of 38,000 classified employees--from bus drivers to teachers’ aides to cafeteria workers--who have been guaranteed the eight furlough days in their contracts for this year. Their days off will have to be staggered so that enough employees are available to keep campuses running smoothly.

The semester would have been shortened by adding six days to students’ spring vacations and cutting two days from the end of the school term in June.

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted 4 to 3 last month to approve the shorter year, prompting a scramble among parents to alter their schedules to provide for child care. Now those families will have to readjust to return to the standard school term.

“This is going to be terribly disruptive for families who have already been through so much this year,” said Lynne Calkins, who attended Friday’s state board session to convey the Los Angeles area Parent-Teacher Assn.’s endorsement for the shortened school year.

The concept was also supported by unions representing the district’s classified employees, tradespeople and administrators, but not by the 32,000-member teachers union, which sent a letter to the state board asking that the waiver be rescinded.

The district brought a group of its supporters to address the state board, but only Mason and budget director Henry Jones were allowed to speak. That prompting a charge by Eli Brent, head of the principals union, that the vote was “politically wired” and not in the best interests of Los Angeles schoolchildren.

The district had been counting on the move as a way of softening the impact of pay cuts on its 58,000 full-time employees. Employees would have been furloughed during those eight days when schools were to be shut down. That would have made them eligible to apply for unemployment benefits of up to $47 per day from the state.

State board members said Friday that they were not aware that the plan would increase costs to the state, while saving the district only about $800,000 in transportation and utility costs from its general fund and another $2.2 million that could only have been used to offset cuts in its integration program.

The board’s administrative committee recommended last fall against allowing the shortened semester, citing concerns over the possible negative impact on educational programs. But board members overrode that recommendation, they said Friday, because they believed that the waiver would help the Los Angeles district solve its massive financial problems, which forced cuts of $400 million in its $3.8-billion budget.

Board member Frank B. Light said he approved the waiver request only because district officials represented it as a “major cornerstone in solving a big, big problem. I thought it would help avoid receivership and all kinds of things. . . . Now all of a sudden the figure is only $800,000 in real savings.”

Mason denied that district officials misrepresented the intent of the plan. “We don’t think we misled them. They may have viewed it as an economic sell, but we don’t believe we made it primarily an economic sell.”

State School Supt. Bill Honig had opposed the waiver request from the outset. “The big issue here is what’s this do to the kids,” Honig said Friday. “When you take off the table the issue of these big savings, and you weigh all of this, it’s hard to see how the waiver is a good thing.”

There is still some question as to whether the board has the legal right to withdraw an approved waiver, Mason said, but it is unlikely that the district will appeal, given the time it would take to get a decision.

Joseph Symkowick, general counsel for the state Department of Education, said reversals are allowed if new information surfaces after board members vote.

In this case, the information was provided in a Times article last month detailing the district’s plan to assist furloughed employees in applying for special unemployment benefits provided by the state’s Workshare program to people who are temporarily out of work.

“In this case, the board didn’t have available all of the facts. If they had, they might have made a different decision,” Symkowick said. “No one explained to them that they would increase other state costs through the impact on Workshare.”

The eight-day reduction was narrowly approved by the Los Angeles school board, with opponents citing the hardship on parents as well as education concerns.

“I’m relieved,” said Los Angeles board President Leticia Quezada, who voted against the shortened year. “I think having a full school year will be good for kids and a relief for parents.”

Teachers union President Helen Bernstein--who had agreed to the schedule change to allow her members to collect unemployment benefits but opposed it in a letter to state school board members--said Friday’s action heightens the chaos in the district.

“It was inconvenient the way (the district) handled it the first time around. Now it’s going to be inconvenient again,” she said. “It wasn’t well thought out from the beginning.

“People’s lives are being turned upside-down every day because nobody in this district has a clear sense of vision and planning.”