VAN NUYS : Multitrack Plan for High School Opposed

More than 3,700 letters from faculty members and parents opposing year-round classes at Van Nuys High School have been sent to district administrators, officials said.

“Van Nuys is not a typical high school. . . . It’s not something that fits a mold,” said Michael Lewis, a parent of a magnet student and member of the Van Nuys High School Shared Decision Making Council. The school offers three magnet programs--math-science, medical and performing arts.

By 1995, the Los Angeles Unified School District is attempting to reconfigure all of its high schools to include the ninth grade. Van Nuys High School is expected to switch to the multitrack schedule to accommodate more that 700 ninth-grade magnet and other students.

The multitrack system would divide the school into three populations with staggered schedules.

“There will be over 1,200 magnet students here and three very distinct programs,” said Lewis.

He and other opponents said that if the three magnet programs are put on separate tracks, magnet students would not be able to benefit from taking classes in programs other that their own--a drawing point for many students to Van Nuys.

But the only problems Richard Battaglia, magnet program consultant, foresees with year-round magnets are with transportation. Magnet schools typically pair up to share transportation facilities, but if the magnets are all on separate tracks, this may no longer be possible, he said.

But in a recent faculty survey, 83% of the teachers responding opposed the multitrack system. A flyer distributed to all Van Nuys students listed such problems brought about by year-round schedules as the 100 degree-plus temperatures during the summer, making the learning process for the student “impossible and unhealthy.”

The letters opposing the year-round plan were sent to Los Angeles School Board member Julie Korenstein and Robert Scharf, Van Nuys High’s principal.

Scharf did not return repeated phone calls about the year-round proposal.

But Stephen Walters, administrative consultant to the district’s office of school utilization, said: “Van Nuys is at (its) maximum capacity as of September of ’94. In addition, reconfiguration will be adding 523 new ninth-graders, which makes it extremely difficult to house the additional students in ’95.”