Sudden Switch in School Calendar Barely Causes Stir : Education: Parents, teachers and others used to dealing with the district say they are not surprised by the quick switch from year-round schedule.

If you deal with the Los Angeles Unified School District, you learn quickly to go with the flow, say those who know the district well.

So parents, school administrators, students and summer camp operators hardly seemed fazed by the sudden announcement Thursday that the district’s short-lived experiment with year-round schooling is ending at about two-thirds of the district’s schools.

“You just have to be flexible,” said Hal Kuhn, executive director of the Latchkey Project summer child-care program in the San Fernando Valley. “We’ll just extend our summer program to adjust to whatever the district ever finally decides.

“In this field,” he said, “you get used to changes.”

The school calendar changes, to be finalized June 7 at a Board of Education meeting, means that the next school year will begin Sept. 7 instead of Aug. 16 at the schools that voted to revert to the old calendar. More than 540 schools will make the change, all but one that had the option of ditching the year-round schedule.

Officials at summer recreation programs in the Valley said they began planning months ago to deal with those extra three weeks that students would be out of school this year.

“We all knew there was a good possibility that the schedule would change,” said Lee Marks, assistant program director at the Encino Community Center, operated by the city of Los Angeles.

The center sponsors camp programs for about 300 students and runs through Aug. 27 to accommodate private school students not on a year-round schedule.

“Normally, we would cut way back on staff during the last couple weeks, but this year when we hired counselors we made sure they could stay on if needed,” Marks said. “Now, they probably will be.”

One summer program in the Valley might get a big boost from the switch--the Burbank YMCA. “We are elated over here,” said Elissa Elder-Aga, associate program director.

Burbank schools have stayed on a traditional calendar, but the camp lost “tons of kids”--as many as 1 in 4--out of its summer programs last year because they were LAUSD youngsters, Elder-Aga said. “We hope they will be coming back to us.”

Some programs are not so flexible.

“We have had some mothers calling us up, asking what we might have for their kids in late August,” said Jason Hunter, director of the Matador Sports camps held at Cal State Northridge for students of high school age and younger.

But the sports camps are scheduled to run only through Aug. 13. “I think it is much too late to extend them,” Hunter said.

But many students said they will have no trouble adjusting to more summer vacation.

“I’m gonna work at McDonald’s, make some money and get a car,” said 10th-grader Victor Paredes, who said the extra weeks made him a more attractive hire for a summer job.

When teacher Bernadette De Mendoza’s French class got the news, all the students cheered. So did De Mendoza; it means she can spend a few extra weeks studying at the University of Bordeaux and still have time to visit relatives in France and pop over to Spain to do some research.

“I have to change my plans,” she said, “but it means I get to stay longer.”

Last year, teacher Beth Bleiberg had to stay home and teach journalism at Reseda High School while her daughter’s high school track team--from a nearby district where the traditional schedule is in place--toured the South. But this year, she plans to be there when her daughter competes in the high jump in Texas or Louisiana.

“It’s a blessing,” she said. “Now, it’s back to normal for us.”

But what the school district gives in the summer, it takes away in the winter. The winter break will shrink from eight weeks to two.

This was not good news for skiers and other winter sports fans.

Reseda High School junior Payan Khalepari, 17, said his planned ski trip to Big Bear with his family is in jeopardy because they made their reservations during a week when most people worked.

“Now, we can’t book reservations because we’d have to go the two weeks everyone else goes,” he said, “and they are all booked.”

Tour operators know this only too well.

“Year-round was great because students could take trips in January when the resorts could offer great deals,” said Dave Bussing, owner of Buzz’s Sport Tours in Northridge.

He said that several hundred students took advantage of the expanded winter vacation last year.

“They could go to Jackson Hole for a week for $339,” Bussing said. “During Christmas week, that same trip might run $800.”

Kent Newell, owner of Sierra Ski and Pack in West Los Angeles, also organized several ski trips for LAUSD students last year. He knows that as a businessman, the new school calendar might hurt him.

“But I’m a parent with two kids in L.A. schools, and we prefer the traditional calendar,” Newell said. “It allows us to do more things with the kids in the summer.”