Class Struggle : Addition of 9th-Graders, Switch to Year-Round Schedules Due to Face 4 Valley High Schools

For Dana Irwin, Andrasta Carpenter and Paul Lee, the promotion to high school is coming a little too soon, thank you.

The 13-year-old Sepulveda Middle School students say they aren’t ready for those sprawling campuses filled with older, bigger, more menacing teenagers. They aren’t ready to defend themselves in the hallways and they aren’t ready for the heavy course loads.

It’s all too much. Too fast.

“I’m physically small,” Paul said, sitting in his fourth-period English class the other day. “I’m afraid I might get flushed down a toilet or stuffed into a locker.”

Added Dana: “The 13- and 14-year-olds will be more likely to be beaten up and thrown into trash cans.”

Though those possibilities may be slim, the possibility that Dana, Andrasta and Paul--along with about 3,860 other San Fernando Valley eighth-graders--will begin high school in the coming school year is likely.

As part of a districtwide reorganization plan aimed at improving education for all students--scheduled to be voted on Monday by the Los Angeles district Board of Education--four Valley high schools will enroll ninth-graders. Junior high schools will enroll sixth- through eighth-graders, and elementary campuses will enroll kindergartners through fifth-graders.

Because of the anticipated flood of freshmen, the four high schools--Monroe, North Hollywood, Francis Polytechnic and San Fernando--have little choice but to switch to a year-round schedule to ease the potentially crowded classrooms.

But to the students, administrators and parents affected by the changes, it will be a long, arduous adjustment.

“It certainly is a double whammy,” said Catherine Lum, principal at North Hollywood High, referring to the switch to a year-round system coupled with the reorganization of grade levels. “If this was the best of all possible worlds, wouldn’t it have been better to do this one thing at a time? I don’t know any principal who would willingly choose to do this--it’s a tremendous upheaval of the status quo.”

But although Los Angeles Unified School District officials acknowledge that the transition won’t be easy, they say they are confident that the schools will be able to handle the potential problems.

“I think it’s an enormous change for a school to undertake,” said Asst. Supt. Gordon Wohlers, whose office is proposing the changes. I don’t want to minimize what it takes to accommodate those changes for everyone at the schools . . . but I have a great deal of confidence in these schools.”

Wohlers said the district has convened numerous meetings with the schools to advise them on a range of topics, including hiring and class schedules. In addition, the schools have met--and brainstormed--with administrators from other campuses that have gone through similar changes.

Wohlers also said the infusion of discretionary money also could ease the administrators’ concerns.

The four high schools already have held their own meetings with parents and faculty members. At Sepulveda, Principal Bob Reimann began last year to prepare staff, parents and students. He says the change might not be as daunting as the students, and others, expect.

“I think it’s really a great opportunity for the ninth-graders,” Reimann said. “It’s a richer situation for them in terms of activities and curriculum . . . and I think they’re really ready.”

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Nonetheless, administrators worry about having enough textbooks and the student records to enroll hundreds--and possibly more than 1,000--students in the appropriate classes.

The district expects 3,864 eighth-graders to enter ninth grade at the four high schools. That means about 7,000 student records need to change hands between the junior high and the senior high schools since the high schools need records for both the eighth- and the ninth-graders.

“I don’t think there’s sufficient planning right now for the clerical staff to handle it,” said Phil Saldivar, principal at San Fernando High School, who oversaw similar changes at Jefferson High School.

Guidance counselors rely on the student records to help place students in courses that are suited to their ability and grade. Several counselors said they suspect they will be programming students in classes in a vacuum--without the benefit of previous report cards and other information.

But district officials again say those issues will be addressed and that the schools will receive the information necessary to begin the school year as smoothly as possible. After all, they say, seven of the district’s 14 year-round high schools converted to a year-round schedule and reorganized grades at the same time.

Still, administrators say they also worry about providing the ninth-graders with textbooks in all their classes. In theory, the textbooks are sent to the high schools from the middle schools, but administrators say in practice that often doesn’t occur. They say the middle schools--short of books like most schools--are more inclined to keep them for their own courses.

Saldivar, for one, said San Fernando High would need between $300,000 and $350,000 for new math, science, English and social studies books.

“I won’t get 10% of that,” he said. “It’s a question of finances, and will we be able to provide every child with a book.”

The high schools will, however, receive additional money--that could be used for textbooks, among other things--for switching to the year-round schedule. The schools will probably receive $70 per student, plus an additional $50,000 per campus.

To some, that special funding is a way for the state to avoid paying for new schools. Instead of offering campuses school construction funds, the state offers “incentive” money for year-round campuses.

“We really do have misplaced priorities as a society,” said Barbara Roller, a parent from North Hollywood High School. “They should probably just build a new high school in the East Valley.”

But Roller believes the ninth-graders should be enrolled in high school and that the campuses must offer them a variety of electives and academic courses.

Even that could be a problem, some administrators say. Lum, from North Hollywood, is particularly worried about losing students who might enroll in traditional September-to-June schools.

And if enrollment drops, she said, the schools will be unable to offer as many electives as well as extracurricular activities.

“In a comprehensive high school, smaller is not better,” Lum said. “The problem will really come down to what parents decide to do--and they do have choices.”

Under the district policy of open enrollment, parents can choose campuses with traditional schedules based on space availability. Many high schools, particularly in the West Valley, have empty classroom seats.

It’s a different story at Monroe and Polytechnic, however. Administrators and teachers at those schools are more concerned with the large numbers of expected ninth-graders. They say they have no choice but to switch to a year-round schedule--in which three groups of students attend school on varying schedules.

“Is it going to be rough for us? Yes,” said Jennifer Marple, a Monroe math teacher and union representative at Monroe. “But at some point, you just have to do it. If we keep putting it off, it’s like Novocain--it numbs the pain but it doesn’t kill it.”

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Still, those administrators and teachers say they believe the addition of ninth-graders will be an adjustment at the campuses. More supervision will be required, they say.

Just ask Arlene Anderson, assistant principal at Chatsworth High, which began enrolling ninth-graders three years ago. “They are squirrelly,” she said. “They move a lot quicker and they have to learn the rules and regulations of high school.”

Tell that to the fretting eighth-graders at Sepulveda who bemoan that they will be leaving junior high before they get to attend the special ninth-grade-only dances and the trip to Magic Mountain. Instead, they will arrive as the lowerclassmen on large, imposing high school campuses.

“I’m not sure I really want to leave here,” said Franklin En, a 13-year-old. “We’re just getting used to it and then we have to leave . . . and go to a high school where you’re not sure about anything.”

But Carmen Caserta set her classmates straight.

“To the people who are scared: You all need to stop watching television,” said the no-nonsense 13-year-old. “People are not going to stuff you in lockers or flush you down toilets. Mind your own business, do your schoolwork and stay with your own group of friends.”