School District Still Hasn’t Got It Right : Poor management leads to high school crowding and unwelcome year-round schedule

Events of the past week have made some things clear about the Los Angeles Unified School District. The question is, why didn’t the district try to provide clarification on its own?

For background, recall the time only a few years ago when hundreds of schools throughout the district were operating on a year-round basis. But in 1993, the Board of Education seemed to send a signal that those days were over. Schools were given the right to abandon the dreaded year-round routine and switch back to the traditional September-to-June school year.

In response, the schools sent a message of their own. All but one of about 540 LAUSD campuses with year-round classes opted to return to the traditional calendar.

At about the same time, however, the LAUSD was moving ahead with a citywide school reorganization. It was designed to alleviate crowding in elementary schools by taking away sixth-grade classes. It was designed to create middle schools with sixth-through-eighth-grade formats by moving junior high ninth-graders into senior high school buildings.

And just guess at some of the results.

We have North Hollywood High School, with 2,726 students in January, readying itself for 3,600 students this fall. Its capacity is 3,171 students.

We have San Fernando High School, with 3,144 students, preparing for 4,306 students. It has room for 3,600.

Polytechnic and Monroe high schools are bailing water in the same boat. They are preparing for enrollments that are, respectively, 1,281 and 539 students beyond their campus capacities. Polytechnic, in fact, is considered overcrowded now.

So, what is their option? You guessed it: a year-round schedule of classes.

We’re told that the discussions about the district’s impending grade reorganization contained little about the huge impact to be felt by senior high schools. Why else would we be in a situation in which these high schools are requesting, at this relatively late date, to switch to a year-round schedule of classes? The answer is simple. They think it is their only option, and there is no money for new buildings or portable classrooms.

But if the need for more year-round campuses was “inevitable,” as some now concede, why wasn’t this made clear much earlier than this? Why go through the motions of having campuses switch from year-round schools in 1993 if the grade reorganization was going to radically alter the playing field in 1996?