Korenstein Loses Bid for Traditional School Plan : Education: Board President Leticia Quezada calls for ‘a menu’ of options for members to consider before changing year-round schedule.

Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein failed Thursday to get the board to commit itself to scrapping the year-round classroom calendar in favor of a return to the traditional September-to-June school year.

Korenstein, who represents much of the San Fernando Valley, won only a promise to consider such a move along with other options.

Although a majority of the seven-member board appeared to favor reverting to some sort of a traditional schedule, key backers of a motion by Korenstein withdrew their support because they believed approval would bind them to her version of a calendar and to a subsequent amendment brought forward by colleague Jeff Horton.

“I give up,” Korenstein said, throwing up her hands in frustration after an hour of discussion marked by sniping and testy exchanges between Korenstein and other board members.

Korenstein’s motion instructed Los Angeles school district staff workers to develop and submit a traditional calendar for adoption no later than May 3. But instead of calling for a vote on the motion, school board President Leticia Quezada directed Supt. Sid Thompson to produce “a menu” of options for the board to consider, including the traditional schedule envisioned by Korenstein.

The other options would be to stick with the current year-round schedule, which was adopted amid acrimonious debate two years ago, or to allow schools to decide for themselves which calendars best suit their needs.

For the past two years, about 450 of the district’s 650 schools have been on a calendar in which classes are held from August to June, with an eight-week break in the winter and six weeks in the summer. The calendar has proved highly unpopular with parents, especially on the Westside and in the Valley because it infringes on summer vacation time and leaves children unoccupied for a long period in the winter.

The other 200 schools are on a multitrack system--with three-quarters of their students almost always in class and the other quarter on vacation--to deal with overcrowding on those campuses.

Thursday’s meeting was marked by the same kind of emotion and heated debate that has dogged the year-round calendar issue since it first arose nearly two decades ago. The current schedule was adopted in 1991 over the noisy objections of many parents.

Korenstein’s motion, which board members Mark Slavkin and Roberta Weintraub had previously pledged to support, seemed to have garnered a decisive fourth vote earlier Thursday after Korenstein reached a compromise with Horton.

Horton had opposed a return to a traditional calendar on the grounds that it would create “separate but unequal” systems, because schools in poor, mostly minority areas would still have to remain on year-round multitrack schedules to relieve overcrowding.

“For me, the primary concern is equity,” he said.

But the hurdle seemed cleared after he and Korenstein agreed on an amendment that would set aside the $4.2 million it costs to implement a districtwide year-round schedule and spend it on multitrack schools to compensate for “the very material inequalities that have been visited upon multitrack schools,” Horton said.

But both the original motion and the amendment--for which Korenstein publicly thanked Horton at the meeting--ran into trouble. A majority of board members, including Weintraub and Slavkin, said they would not support the measure if it tied them to actually adopting the calendar and earmarking the $4.2 million.

“I would vote for all the options . . . to be before us May 3,” said Slavkin, the author of the motion to give schools the authority to determine schedules themselves.

He asked that all ideas be given a fair hearing by the board and the general public. “This issue is playing with dynamite,” he said. “No other issue we deal with so affects the lives of the children and their families.”

Weintraub expressed support for reverting to a traditional calendar but said she did not approve of designating the money it would save for use only by multitrack schools. She said it would be difficult to commit the $4.2 million without having a better sense of what the cash-strapped school system’s budget for next year will look like.

“It’s not that I won’t support it; I’m just not ready to support it today,” she said.

Board member Warren Furutani said he also wanted all the options to be “on the table” May 3. Only trustee Barbara Boudreaux said she completely opposed Korenstein’s motion because switching back so suddenly and so late in the current school year would throw the district “into disarray,” she said. She added, however, that she is willing to consider a return to a traditional calendar.

Korenstein insisted that her motion simply directed the district’s staff to submit a possible traditional calendar to the board for consideration, but agreed that she did expect board members voting in favor of the measure to follow through next month and approve the schedule.