Van Nuys High’s Magnet Plan Spared From Principal’s Cuts

Los Angeles Unified School District administrators have chastised the principal of Van Nuys High School for trying to kill the school’s popular medical magnet program and sharply curtail two others.

The principal’s plan triggered an angry outcry from parents and students.

In a series of memos released Thursday, district officials scolded Principal Robert G. Scharf for trying to make the first-ever cutbacks in a magnet program, ordering him to reinstate all three programs at the Van Nuys campus to their full capacity--and dictating several alternatives to accommodate a growing enrollment.

In addition, the directives accuse Scharf of misrepresenting predictions of crowding at the school, to which he had attributed the need to curtail the magnet programs: the performing arts, math and science, and medicine.

Meanwhile, the practical training sessions in the medical magnet program are expected to move from Valley Presbyterian Hospital to Valley Hospital Medical Center, which is being renamed the Sherman Way campus of Northridge Hospital Medical Center after a recent merger. Details of the magnet school move are still being worked out, but “it looks pretty close,” a Northridge Hospital executive said.

Valley Presbyterian administrators notified the school district in April that changes in hospital operations would force them to severely restrict their participation in the 3-year-old magnet program beginning in the fall. Tim Bojeczko, assistant coordinator of the medical magnet program for Valley Presbyterian, said classrooms and other hospital facilities now used by the school are needed for expanded community education programs.

In view of the action by Valley Presbyterian, Van Nuys High officials last month said they planned to phase out the popular medical magnet program, which has a waiting list of more than 600.

District officials said the proposed elimination of a magnet program was unprecedented.

The magnet programs, designed to draw students from throughout the city to special educational opportunities, were launched more than 20 years ago as a result of a court order mandating measures to promote racial integration. About 42,000 students are now enrolled in such programs at 132 campuses citywide, with a waiting list of more than 30,000.

Scharf did not return calls Thursday from The Times. However, he said in previous interviews that his school would have to curtail the medical magnet program and eventually the other two programs to provide room for ninth-grade students, who will be added to the top three grades in the 1996-97 school year.

A 16-member school council last month rejected by a wide margin the option of switching the school from a traditional, 10-month calendar to a year-round schedule to accommodate the ninth-graders.

Scharf said that action left him no alternative but to cut the magnet programs, beginning this year. His announcement prompted an outcry from parents and students.

After a series of frantic meetings among district and school officials, directives were issued by the district this week to maintain all three magnet programs. District spokesman Bill Rivera said Thursday that Scharf “has been directed to fill the magnets.”

Notices are expected to be mailed today to 333 new students to be accepted into the three magnet programs at the school in September.

Van Nuys High is the only school in the district with three magnet programs and one of only three district schools with a medical careers program, said Richard Battaglia, district magnet coordinator. The other medical programs are at Bravo Medical Magnet in Lincoln Heights and Drew Medical Magnet in Watts.

School board member Julie Korenstein, who represents the district that includes Van Nuys High, said the proposed curtailment of the magnet programs “was not in the best interest of the school or the community. All of us Downtown want to find a way to hold onto those seats.”

District officials said they discovered during a meeting with Scharf this week that the capacity at the Van Nuys campus is greater than originally reported. Gordon Wohlers, assistant district superintendent who oversees classroom utilization, said in a memo that Scharf and his administrators underestimated the school’s capacity by about 300 students.

In a report to the district in April, Scharf placed the school’s capacity at its current enrollment of about 3,000 students. However, district officials said, Scharf did not take into account eight temporary classroom buildings. Nor did he consider using classrooms full time that now are open for one period for teacher meetings with students.

District officials earlier had said they were reluctant to overrule the school’s decision to curtail magnet programs rather than switch to a year-round program. The emphasis throughout the Los Angeles district during the past five years has been to encourage home-rule of schools by leaving key decisions up to parent-teacher-administrator councils. However, officials on Thursday made clear that they had left Scharf no choice.

“The district has the authority to tell Scharf what he has to do to fully utilize school facilities,” Rivera said. “He has been given two options: He can either use capacity to the fullest by using traveling teachers and stay on the traditional calendar, or, if he does not want to use traveling teachers, then he has to go to year-round. Either way, he has to take care of the magnets.”

* HOSPITALS MERGE: Two Valley hospitals consolidate operations to cut costs. B6