Van Nuys High OKs Year-Round Schedule

Before a packed house, the Van Nuys High School leadership council voted resoundingly to convert to a year-round multitrack schedule beginning July 1, despite a three-year struggle to avoid the staggered calendar.

Burdened by an expected influx of 600 ninth-graders come fall and under pressure to reconfigure, the council opted for what it believes will lead to less crowding and more safety.

The action, taken at a meeting Tuesday, was prompted by a districtwide reorganization that bumps sixth-graders into middle school and ninth-graders to high school. The new freshmen will push the school past its capacity of 3,481 students, according to Principal Robert G. Scharf.

The challenge, he said, is to preserve the best academic programs for all students at the scholastically rigorous school, which boasts two students who last fall achieved perfect 1,600 scores on their Scholastic Assessment Tests as well as the winning team in the 1995 National Science Bowl.

“We are very proud of our school,” said Scharf, who co-chairs the leadership council, which comprises teachers, parents and administrators. “The academic excellence of our school is well established. It is our commitment to continue that excellence.”

But Charles Wilken, the campus teachers union representative and the council’s other co-chair, had a dire prediction: “The class choice for students will go way down,” he said. “They can only take what’s offered on their track. . . . We’re solemnly marching into this and watching for the fallout.”

Given the school’s three magnet programs--medical, performing arts and math-science--the next decision is which students are eligible for which track. The council must decide either to group all 1,200 magnet students on the A track or disperse the magnets over all tracks.

Conventional wisdom holds that the A track, which most resembles the traditional September-through-June school year, is the most desirable. Under the multitrack system, students are divided into three groups, with two groups attending classes at any one time, while the third group vacations.

Parent Teacher Student Assn. President Sherryl Zurek said the decision to go year-round was inevitable, but that fact doesn’t ease her concerns about the schedule.

“I just hate to see it,” said Zurek, whose three sons attend three different schools, each on a different calendar. “No. 1, because it’s hot in the summertime for kids to go to school without air-conditioning. And it just disrupts the family if you have kids on different tracks.”

School board member Julie Korenstein, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, said the school would eventually be air-conditioned, “but not by this summer, because it’s late.”

For magnet students, who often attend prestigious summer sessions at college campuses, being on the wrong track could mean an end to summer enrichment, she said.

Pending school board approval, the leadership council vote all but guarantees that Van Nuys will join four other Valley schools slated to go year-round in the 1996-97 school year. The Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education last week voted to convert four schools--Monroe, North Hollywood, Francis Polytechnic and San Fernando--to the controversial, albeit practical, timetable.

Korenstein said the school board would be inclined to approve the leadership council’s final recommendation.

Over the last three years, the Van Nuys leadership council has considered several strategies to avoid the year-round calendar, which actually reduces the number of days students are in school from 180 to 163. The school day is lengthened by about 39 minutes to compensate.

At this time last year, the council considered adding portable classrooms to the campus to ease overcrowding. It also weighed the option of reducing the school’s population by redirecting 14% of students to other schools. In May, the council voted to eliminate the school’s popular medical magnet and curtail the tow other magnets. School district officials nixed that option.

“We’ve gone through our golden years the last few years,” Wilken mused. “Everyone knows things will go downward now.”