Talks Underway to Reconsider School’s Year-Round Calendar

The principal of North Hollywood High School and a teachers union representative said Monday that talks are underway to reconsider the controversial year-round school calendar before it goes into effect.

The announcement by Principal Catherine Lum surprised a meeting of the school Leadership Council--made up of parents, teachers, administrators and a student--which was originally called to reconsider the assignment of groups of students to each of the three “tracks” of the year-round schedule.

“We are having a faculty meeting . . . to see if it’s even possible to consider remaining on a single track,” Lum said. The meeting is scheduled today at 3:15 p.m.

The school’s approximately 100 teachers will be asked at the faculty meeting to make a “critical decision” to keep alive the possibility of retaining the traditional September-to-June calendar, said Jim Burr, campus representative of United Teachers-Los Angeles.

If the school is to remain on the traditional calendar, all classrooms will have to be used every period, upsetting the current routine for classes and student conferences.

Neither Lum nor the union representative would speculate whether the teachers would agree to such a change. Lum could mandate the change if she wishes, but she said she prefers to have the faculty’s support.

“The faculty needs to say that we can make it work,” Lum said. “It’s the teachers that make it work.”

The school Leadership Council agreed to follow the teachers’ recommendations regarding the calendar, be it traditional or year-round.

The wrangle over year-round classes was prompted by a Los Angeles school board decision in early February. Four San Fernando Valley high schools--North Hollywood among them--were converted to the controversial 12-month schedule to cope with higher enrollments because the three-year high schools are adding a fourth year.

Ninth-graders are being shifted to the high schools in a general reorganization. North Hollywood High, which had about 2,300 students last year, is scheduled to receive 800 more.

Monday’s announcement that the change may be avoided was spurred by a “walk-through” tour last week, according to school district administrator Carmen Schroeder, who oversees North Hollywood and Francis Polytechnic high schools. During that tour, Schroeder, Lum and other district officials identified seven large classrooms that could be divided into two rooms, providing enough additional capacity to allow the school to remain on a traditional calendar, she said.

The district has pledged about $45,000 to the school to reconfigure those classrooms, and another $20,000 or so to cover additional equipment, including desks, Schroeder added.

Carol Singerman, the president of the advisory council to the school’s magnet program for highly gifted students, expressed delight at the announcement.

“The magnet parents, all along, have expressed this as their very first choice, that the school remain traditional,” she said after the two-hour meeting.

For weeks, the parents of the 244 students in the highly gifted magnet program have bitterly protested that the year-round calendar--under which two-thirds of the students do not get a full summer vacation--would hurt their children’s chances to attend summer enrichment programs at many prestigious colleges.

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But parent Tony Maldonado, who represents the school’s bilingual advisory council, was dubious that the traditional calendar could be salvaged.

“Honestly, in my opinion, I do not believe that this school will stay traditional,” Maldonado said, noting that school district officials have previously nixed school plans to purchase bungalows or change school attendance boundaries to avoid the unpopular year-round schedule.

Meanwhile, the council also agreed to reconsider at its meeting next Monday the assignment of groups of students to particular calendar tracks. This action was spurred by a grievance filed with the teachers union, alleging that inadequate notice was given before a Jan. 16 vote that placed zoological-sciences magnet students on a traditional calendar and students in the highly gifted magnet program on a less desirable July-through-May calendar, Burr said.

“We’re at square one,” he said.