Board Approves End of Year-Round Classes for Most L.A. Schools

Ending two years of frustration for many of its constituents, the Los Angeles Board of Education 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 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 the 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 crowding. President Leticia Quezada said children on those campuses continue to be shortchanged by having to attend class on a year-round basis.

The 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. As a result of the 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.

However, the district’s “multitrack” schools, concentrated in heavily minority, inner-city neighborhoods, did not get a choice. 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 crowding.

The school board voted in 1990 to implement a systemwide year-round schedule in large part to ensure equity’ throughout the 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 again next year.

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

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.