District’s Future Rides on Bond Decision : Education: Paramount schools teem with students. Officials fear a downward slide without financing to relieve overcrowding.

Walk across any campus in the Paramount Unified School District and you see signs of the trouble.

At Gaines Elementary, it takes six lunch shifts to feed nearly 900 students. At Clearwater Intermediate School, lockers have been declared off-limits to avoid logjams in hallways. And just getting to class at neighboring Paramount High School can be a test of wills: Bump the wrong person in the chaotic rush and you may end up in a fight.

Paramount’s school district is teeming with students. After years of growing enrollment and little construction, district officials find themselves scrambling to relieve swollen campuses, some of which house nearly twice the number of students they were intended to accommodate.

Today, playground space is being eaten up by portable classrooms, and libraries double as storage areas for copying machines and other school equipment. One elementary school has converted a supply room into a counseling office.

Frustrated students at Paramount High--a school built for about 1,800 students but now serving more than 3,000--can’t take books home to study because there aren’t enough to go around. More than 40 students cram into some classes--standing in the back or sitting on countertops when all the seats are taken.

“Our schools are bursting at the seams,” school board member Betty Harkema said. “We cannot overlook it any longer.”

Officials are pinning their hopes on a March 7 special election in which voters will be asked to approve a $15-million bond measure to help pay for two new schools and classroom renovations. Four of five school board members have endorsed the measure, and most city leaders have declared their support. It must be approved by two-thirds of the voters.

Some local officials trace the roots of the school crisis to 1982, when a Rand Corp. report on U.S. suburbs identified Paramount as one of a handful of disaster areas in the country. At the time, the city was known for polluted industrial sites, dilapidated storefronts and impoverished neighborhoods beset by crime and high unemployment.

“We were at rock-bottom,” City Manager Patrick West said.

As a result of the report, the city embarked on an ambitious housing program to attract white-collar professionals who would spend their money at local stores and help boost the city’s image.

The City Council designated several blighted areas where developers could build upscale homes and high-density condominiums and apartments that offered amenities such as swimming pools and underground parking.

Meanwhile, the city’s redevelopment agency began to revamp the downtown area--razing haggard buildings, attracting new stores such as a Vons supermarket, even adding touches such as tree-lined street medians.

By the end of the 1980s, nearly 2,000 new dwellings had sprung up, helping make Paramount one of the fastest-growing cities in the Southeast area. During the decade, the population grew by 31%, from 36,407 to 47,669--second only to Signal Hill.

School officials say they warned city leaders that the ambitious development would flood local classrooms at a time when the district had no money for new schools. School officials said their pleas were ignored.

“The city did not understand what kind of an impact there was going to be on schools,” said Shirley Elliott, who served on the school board during the 1980s. “The understanding (was), ‘Hey, we’re the city, we’ll take care of the city. You’re the school district, you take care of the school kids.’ ”

City leaders acknowledge that the building boom added children to Paramount classrooms, but insist that the impact has been exaggerated. The new apartment and condo complexes consisted primarily of one- and two-bedroom dwellings, they said.

City officials argue that the school district has grown primarily because of an influx of families in Paramount’s low-income neighborhoods, a point on which some school officials agree.

Paramount’s population started to swell in the mid-1970s, as immigrants from Mexico and Central America began arriving.

Today, signs of the influx are evident. City code enforcement officers frequently encounter large families crammed into small homes and back-yard cottages, and living in converted garages despite a decade-old ban.

The school district’s enrollment grew from about 9,800 students in 1980 to more than 14,000 today. During those years, Latino enrollment rose from 50% of the student population to 74%.

But the district’s response to the growing enrollment was halfhearted at best, according to some school and city officials.

In 1987, the school board instructed administrators to contact the city to request help in coping with overcrowding that resulted from redevelopment. City officials agreed to meet and asked for additional information about district overcrowding. But school board President Ken Teeples notified them that a meeting was not necessary because crowding was not an immediate problem.

Then-Mayor Manuel E. Guillen said he was bewildered by that response. Teeples declined to comment, saying he has been seriously ill.

In 1991, the district formed a committee to study year-round classes to help relieve packed schools, but the panel never issued a plan.

“We never really got our act together,” said Vivian Hansen, a school board member who served on the committee studying year-round classes. “There was never a districtwide thrust to deal with the overcrowding.”

Many current and former Paramount Unified officials lay much of the blame on former school Supt. Richard B. Caldwell, who was fired two years ago and won a seat on the Paramount school board. Caldwell was the only member of the school board to vote in November against placing the $15-million bond measure on the ballot.

School district officials refused to comment publicly about Caldwell, citing a lawsuit he has filed against the city over his ouster. But they complained privately that Caldwell failed to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with crowded schools.

Caldwell, who served as superintendent from 1979 to 1992, defended his record.

He said he appeared before the Paramount City Council in the 1980s to raise concerns about the city’s rapid development but that council members ignored his pleas. City officials said they don’t recall an appearance by Caldwell.

Caldwell said the only council member to offer a sympathetic ear was his wife, Esther. She backed a successful ballot measure in 1988 that halted the city’s building boom by abolishing zones designated for high-density development.

Richard Caldwell also said there “wasn’t any major demand or need” for a long-range plan to deal with crowding during most of his tenure because district enrollment did not begin to surge until 1991.

“All of a sudden, the thing just began to blow,” he said.

In the 2 1/2 years since he departed, the crowded conditions have worsened, students and teachers say.

Students complain of a shortage of books and packed classes in which they can’t get enough help from teachers.

Teachers, meanwhile, describe their own frustrations.

Calvin Jones, a social studies teacher at Clearwater Intermediate School, said his classes are so large that students lose interest and are tempted to talk with friends.

Safety also has become a primary concern on overcrowded campuses.

At elementary schools, administrators have banned traditional kinds of recess activities for fear of injuries.

Students at Gaines Elementary, a school built for 540 students but serving nearly 900 today, cannot play tag, soccer or other contact sports during recess because there aren’t enough aides to keep watch. When the bell rings at the end of recess, students freeze in a practice designed to calm them down before they head back to class.

“Every little bump and bruise and altercation takes time away from instruction,” Principal Sue Lance said.

Officials say the upcoming bond election is crucial to relieving crowded schools in the district, which also serves portions of Lakewood, Bellflower, North Long Beach and South Gate.

If the bond measure passes, homeowners in the district would pay an additional $22 a year, generating $15 million to buy new computer equipment, help build two elementary schools and add air conditioning to classrooms for year-round schedules.

A committee of school board members, city officials and parents has been assembled to drum up support among PTA groups. The panel is focusing its message on safety in classrooms, a strategy that helped El Rancho Unified School District in Pico Rivera win passage of a $13-million bond measure in November.