Board Adopts Traditional School Year : Education: The vote is a victory for parents opposed to the current calendar.

Ending two years of frustration for many of its constituents, the Los Angeles Board of Education formally adopted a traditional September-to-June school calendar Monday, bowing to the wishes of thousands of parents and school staff members who voted last month to scrap the controversial year-round schedule at more than 540 campuses and centers.

The unanimous vote by the board represented a retreat from a decision three years ago to impose a systemwide year-round schedule, and was a victory for parents--mostly from the San Fernando Valley--who had agitated against the so-called common calendar since its inception.

“It’s being received with a tremendous amount of relief,” said Cecelia Mansfield of the Valley-based 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn., which favored a return to a traditional schedule. “We feel vindicated in terms of being in tune with what the community was feeling.”

But some board members warned that the calendar issue may be reopened next year to accommodate concerns that some schools cannot revert to the traditional school year because of overcrowding. President Leticia Quezada said children on those campuses continue to be “shortchanged” by having to attend class on a year-round basis.

The current policy of allowing a partial reversion to a traditional calendar was approved last month, when the seven-member board decided to allow parents, teachers and administrators to vote on whether to maintain the year-round calendar, with its extended winter and abbreviated summer breaks, or return to the September-to-June schedule.

Officials tallied the ballots by high school complex, consisting of high schools and their feeder junior high and elementary campuses. According to the majority vote in each complex, all but one of the 543 Los Angeles Unified School District campuses and centers eligible to change their schedules will switch back--about two-thirds of all those in the nation’s second-largest school system.

But the district’s “multitrack” schools, concentrated in heavily minority, inner-city neighborhoods, did not get to choose. Those campuses, which serve about 40% of the district’s 640,000 students, must rotate groups of students into class throughout the year to alleviate overcrowding.

The school board voted in 1990 to implement a systemwide year-round schedule, in large part to ensure “equity” throughout a district whose students are increasingly poor and minority. Board member Jeff Horton reiterated those concerns at Monday’s board meeting.

“This is local choice for communities that have privilege,” he said. “This is not a happy solution. A happy solution for me would be a whole district on an equal basis.”

But colleague Barbara Boudreaux said it would be foolish for the district to retool the schedule yet again next year.

“Bouncing back and forth has been disgraceful,” she said. “We cannot put our students through that kind of mismanagement.”

The most vocal opposition to the year-round calendar has been from the Valley and the Westside, where parents in more affluent communities have complained that they were being unfairly penalized and that--especially in the Valley--their children were being forced to attend school during sizzling summer weather. A San Fernando High School football player died last year of heatstroke after practicing in 100-degree weather shortly after the start of school in August.

Observers say the heat factor and the $4.2 million it cost the money-starved district each of the past two years to implement the year-round schedule ultimately led officials to capitulate.

Under the calendar adopted Monday, opening day of class will be Sept. 7 rather than Aug. 16. Winter break will span two weeks, and summer vacation will again last for three months.

Times Education Writer Stephanie Chavez contributed to this story.

School Calendar Vote Following a policy approved by the Los Angeles Board of Education last month, parents, teachers, administrators and some community members were permitted to vote on whether to maintain the year-round calendar or switch to a traditional September-to-June school schedule. Campuses were grouped by high school complexes composed of a high school and its feeder junior high and elementary campuses, and the majority vote at the complex level decided the issue for that group of schools.

In the San Fernando Valley, where opposition to the year-round calendar was greatest, the votes were as follows:

COMPLEX TRADITIONAL VOTES YEAR-ROUND VOTES Birmingham 2,586 997 Canoga Park 2,536 881 Chatsworth 3,639 1,068 Cleveland 3,635 1,059 El Camino Real 3,280 468 Granada Hills 3,692 831 Grant 3,379 1,187 Kennedy 3,278 939 Monroe 5,158 2,027 North Hollywood 2,592 896 Polytechnic 3,294 1,328 Reseda 4,046 1,076 San Fernando 2,525 1,209 Sylmar 1,871 955 Taft 2,675 529 Van Nuys 3,313 1,326 Verdugo Hills 2,760 890

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District