Relocating a Magnet School

Many of the arguments over the year-round schedule are quite laughable. Highest on the list is board member [Jeff] Horton’s comment that moving the highly gifted magnet would set a terrible precedent. Just ask teachers at South Gate, Bell, Huntington Park and Belmont high schools about their opportunities to create magnet schools over the past 10 years. As overcrowded schools, on year-round programs for more than a decade, they have been precluded from magnet programs. Why?

These schools have not had the capacity to house the students in their respective neighborhoods, let alone support the district integration program for which magnet schools were originally designed. Magnet schools were designed to create outstanding educational programs to help remediate some of the overcrowding and racial imbalance in the Los Angeles Unified schools by attracting students from throughout the district to schools where space is available.

North Hollywood and Van Nuys high schools have experienced the kind of population and demographic changes that Southeastern high schools saw in the late 1970s. I have no idea whether these Valley schools would be able to remain on the traditional calendar if their magnets were moved, but if a school such as Reseda High has the space and the desire to house a magnet, and magnet students and parents feel that a year-round program is an unsatisfactory option, what could be a better choice than to relocate a magnet to Reseda High or another school where space exists? This would satisfy the needs of students and parents while creating additional space at overcrowded schools.

BRUCE GURNICK

Northridge

Gurnick teaches at Reseda High School