Does This School System Work? : Bureaucratic inflexibility imperils Van Nuys High’s honored magnet program

This should be nothing less than a sweet summer of glory days for Van Nuys High School and its magnet programs. It ought to be a time to bask in the knowledge that it has become one of the most effective schools of its kind in the nation. So why is this Los Angeles Unified School District campus facing ruin?

Here’s a situation that ought to raise the bile of anyone still pulling for this school district.

Van Nuys High School and its medical, math-science, and performing arts magnets have covered themselves with laurels. Its students took 847 Advanced Placement exams for college credit in 1994, and did well enough on those tests to rank 15th out of 10,800 high schools nationwide. Its students beat all comers, nationwide, to win the prestigious National Science Bowl. It even had a student with a perfect combined score of 1600 of the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

But the school now says it will be forced to scuttle the medical program and cut enrollment in its math-science and performing arts magnets, respectively, by 13.4% and 29.2%. Of course, the only people who will be truly hurt are the students.

Why? By a March vote from the Los Angeles Board of Education, all high schools will have to add room for a ninth-grade class, and Van Nuys is already at capacity with 3,000 students. Wasn’t any consideration given for the possible effect on schools like Van Nuys? Why can’t district officials and school board members find a way to expand the program with additional space, perhaps at another school, as has been done in Orange County?

Plus, Valley Presbyterian Hospital, which has worked with the medical magnet program, can no longer continue to do so. But the fact is that well-run school systems are always on the lookout for backup businesses or facilities that would be willing to step in, in the event that the primary partnership came to a sudden end. No such thoughtfulness appears to have occurred here.

Sure, the school could go to a year-round schedule, but its 16-member school council, made up of parents, teachers and school administrators, isn’t about to be forced into that. Among other things, that would be too tough on students taking courses elsewhere.

In fact, this has been handled like two steam locomotives barreling right at each other, with no one expressing worry because the track is smooth. This could have been foreseen months or years ago. It’s getting hard to argue with people who say that the LAUSD simply doesn’t work.