Schools’ Open House Conflicts With Election Day

Last summer, officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District picked today as the date high schools would hold their spring open houses, when parents meet teachers and talk about their children’s progress in school.

What they didn’t realize was that it was election day.

And although many schools scrambled to reschedule their open houses when they realized the conflict, some--including El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills--did not.

Some parents are upset, saying the conflict forces them to choose between being good citizens and being good parents. They say that the rancorous relationship between teachers and the district played a significant role in creating the problem.

“Parents are going to have to make a choice as to whether they vote or whether they come to their children’s open house,” said Jayla Walters, president of the Parent Teacher Student Assn. at El Camino Real.

Even worse, Walters said, teachers at the school insisted that it be held from 5 to 7 p.m., instead of 7 to 9 p.m., as parents had requested.

And that, she said, meant the district would be unable to bring parents from inner-city neighborhoods to the campus, because school buses would still be busy taking children home. Parents who manage to get to the school, however, will be able to go home after the event on buses with students who have stayed late, said Assistant Principal Joyce Washington.

Daniel Isaacs, assistant school district superintendent, said there is no way of knowing how many campuses managed to move the open house date, because each school handled its own schedule.

“We did reschedule,” said Yvonne Noble, principal of Crenshaw High School in the Crenshaw District. “Because we want to vote, too.” Noble said Crenshaw’s open house will be May 4.

But at El Camino Real, teachers refused to support a plan to move the open house to May, said Jack W. Koenig, co-chairman of the committee of teachers, parents and administrators that handles scheduling at the school.

Koenig, a teacher who represents the United Teachers of Los Angeles on the committee, said faculty members felt that May was too late in the school year for meeting with parents.

He blamed the school district for not offering alternative dates soon enough, and said he was not concerned about parents’ abilities to vote and attend the open house.

“One could assume that they could vote before they came,” Koenig said, even if parents are coming from South-Central Los Angeles. “I’m going to vote in the morning before work.”

Teachers requested the early time, he said, because some fear going home after dark.

But one parent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was no way she or her husband could attend, both because of the election and because the time of the event conflicts with work hours.

“I work a precinct,” the parent said. “I sit at the polls from 7 o’clock in the morning until 8 o’clock at night. I have no chance to go to my daughter’s open house.”

Another parent--who also requested anonymity, saying that teachers might retaliate against her child--said had she known the open house would be today, she would have requested an absentee ballot. But the parent said she did not learn the date until last week.

“It seems like a very difficult and inconvenient time for a lot of parents,” said school board member Mark Slavkin, whose district has been redrawn to include El Camino Real and who is up for reelection today.

But, he said, the decision was made jointly by parents, teachers and administrators at the school.

“Nobody that I’m aware of held a gun to their heads,” said Slavkin, a proponent of giving individual schools even more power over the way they teach. “They made that choice.”

Besides worrying about whether parents can vote as well as attend, there is also reason to be concerned that parents might be unable to come at all, Walters said.

For years, she said, teachers have complained that parents do not participate in school activities, and have said such neglect can affect a child’s performance.

Now, teachers “are so unhappy they don’t care who gets hurt,” Walters said. “I don’t think teachers care if parents come.”