SANTA ANA : School’s In: Break Ends For 25,000

For most students countywide, Thursday was just another day in a long, lazy summer vacation, but for about 25,000 students in Santa Ana, Anaheim and several other cities, it was the start of a new school year.

At Santa Ana’s Sierra Intermediate School, which started its first year-round schedule Thursday, about 1,100 students flooded into classrooms toting binders, pencils and rulers.

During a break from class, Manuel Aguilar, 12, said he preferred the long summer vacation that the traditional schedule provided.

The eighth-grade student from Santa Ana said: “I’m kind of mad. (Other students) get the whole summer off, and we have to be in school. I’d like to go to the beach.”

Aguilar also felt cheated by the short vacation that began when the last school year ended on June 18: “I didn’t go to many places. We should have gotten more time off.”

In an effort to ease intense crowding throughout the Santa Ana Unified School District, 24 elementary and intermediate schools now run on year-round schedules.

Instead of having classes for nine months with a three-month vacation, about 25,000 students now have classes for two months followed by a one-month break.

Students are assigned to one of four rotating class schedules, which are arranged so that only three-fourths of the students are in school at a time.

District spokeswoman Diane Thomas said the district has used year-round schedules since 1980 because the student population has grown faster than the district’s ability to build schools.

Sierra Principal Cathy Makin said the year-round schedule is expected to improve learning retention because during the short breaks, “the kids don’t forget as much and teachers don’t have to do as much catch-up. You don’t get as much burnout.”

Other districts with at least one school on a year-round schedule include Anaheim City, Capistrano Unified, Centralia, Cypress, Irvine Unified, Magnolia and Orange Unified.

At Santa Ana’s Sierra, Angela Ramirez, 14, said she prefers year-round school because it offers more vacations. The traditional schedule’s long summer vacation “was boring, so I was happy to come back and see all my friends again.”

Maricela Lopez, 13, disagreed and pointed out that if she didn’t have to be at school, she could go to the beach or the mall. With a longer summer, she said, “you get to see more people, and you could join a basketball camp or other camps like that.”

But the new schedule isn’t all bad, she added. “We were going to have to come back sooner or later, so I guess it’s all right.”