Board Drops Plan to Make All Campuses Year-Round : Education: Crowded schools will remain on 12-month schedule, but change will be voluntary for others. Critics say decision is unfair to poor, minority neighborhoods.

Citing lower enrollment than expected, school officials have rescinded plans to convert all elementary and middle schools to a year-round schedule by July, 1994.

The district opted, instead, for a plan that would allow schools to operate year-round on a voluntary basis.

This week’s vote rescinds a decision made two years ago to convert all elementary and middle schools to year-round schedules. At the time, board members said year-round schools offered a better education and that the district was rapidly running out of classroom space for its skyrocketing enrollment. A year-round schedule increases a school’s capacity by as much as a third.

Board members had also contended that operating year-round across the entire district was the fairest solution even though enrollment growth was uneven. But at Monday’s board meeting, trustees and staff members said the situation had changed considerably.

“I do not view this motion as a flip-flop,” said board member Jenny Oropeza, a proponent of year-round education. Because enrollment in the state’s fourth-largest school district has not grown as fast as expected, she said, the plan to covert all schools to year-round schedules by July, 1994, would be “imprudent and irresponsible.

“The numbers are irrefutable,” Oropeza said. “The growth patterns are not there.”

Enrollment grew this year by 1,614 to a record 75,643 students, but was hundreds of students lower than officials were expecting.

Now, officials plan to accommodate the increases by adding more classrooms. The district opened one new elementary school in 1990 and plans to open two more schools in the next two years. Other elementary schools are adding portable classrooms. Middle schools have increased capacity as a result of remodeling. And high schools will be able to hold more students with the completion of a new science building on each campus.

The 12 district schools already on year-round schedules will remain on them to ease overcrowding, unless parents and faculty petition for a change. Without a year-round schedule, the district would have to bus many more students at these schools to campuses outside their neighborhoods.

These schools generally serve poor, minority neighborhoods downtown and in west Long Beach. Schools serving wealthier, more Anglo neighborhoods in East Long Beach have class space to spare and do not operate year-round.

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Parent Sharon Jackson told the board that this week’s decision discriminates against students living in less affluent parts of the city.

“The direction the school board is heading is unfair,” she told board members. “If (year-round) is educationally sound for some of our students, it should be educationally sound for all of our students.”

School officials insisted, however, that district policy was sound because all schools can petition to operate year-round.

Additional schools could become year-round if administrators can demonstrate widespread parent and faculty support--and if the change isn’t too costly, district spokesman Dick Van Der Laan said. “It doesn’t make much sense to have an elementary year-round school that enrolls fewer than 800 students,” Van Der Laan said. “Below that it becomes less efficient.”

In fact, the board on Monday approved plans to convert three middle schools--Franklin, Hamilton and Washington--to year-round schedules in July. Faculty and parents in these schools had voted in favor of the change.

Many Eastside parents, however, have vehemently protested year-round proposals. Officials acknowledged that significant opposition to year-round schooling still exists, “I think those who have year-round like it so far,” Van Der Laan said. “Those who are opposed to it are probably still opposed to it.”

Resident John Downing told board members Monday that the prospect of year-round education has been driving parents out of the school district. “A lot of parents are saying, ‘We don’t want our kids in Long Beach schools because we don’t want year-round schools,’ ” Downing said.

Some observers said they suspect that the board is caving in to such opposition. “This is more a decision in terms of what would be politically correct than what would be socially correct,” said Roberto Uranga, chairman of the district’s Hispanic Advisory Committee.

In an interview before the vote, Uranga added that he believes a year-round schedule is superior to a traditional calendar. He cited research suggesting that students retain more when they take several shorter breaks--such as two to four weeks--instead of the traditional long summer recess.

The district’s decision won praise from teachers union head Jim Deaton and Long Beach PTA President Marjorie Kinney.

“I think it’s excellent to make it optional,” Kinney said. “You say to the school: ‘You decide what’s best for your community.’ ”

Administrators speculated that the economy is partly to blame for the slower enrollment growth. The number of employees at the McDonnell Douglas Corp. plant in Long Beach has declined from 53,000 in 1990 to about 19,000. Many families probably had to leave the area to find employment, school officials said.

What’s more, foreign immigration to the Long Beach area may have slowed, officials said. In the fall of 1990, a peak of 319 students enrolled at a school the district had established for recent immigrants to this country. A year later, in 1991, that number had declined to 180. Last fall, only 20 students signed up, prompting the district to close the school.

Community Correspondent Kirsten Lee Swartz contributed to this article.