2 Valley Schools Kill Year-Round Calendar Plans

After weeks of anguished protests from parents and students, officials at Van Nuys and North Hollywood high schools have decided to stay on traditional schedules, scrapping previous plans to convert to year-round calendars.

The decisions, which came after separate meetings at each school, were made despite the fact both campuses are becoming four-year institutions this fall and will have to absorb a combined total of 1,400 new freshmen.

In Van Nuys, after an emotional, 90-minute meeting, the vote on the calendar by the Shared Decision Making Council--made up of teachers, administrators, parents and one student--was a tie at 8 to 8. But in the absence of a majority, teachers’ union representative Charles Wilken announced the school would remain on the traditional calendar.

Hoots, embraces and a standing ovation followed his words.

“I think this is wonderful, because this way we all get to stay together,” said Van Nuys 11th-grader Matt Tocuseanu after the vote. Matt was one of the student organizers of two campus sit-ins protesting the year-round schedule, which would have staggered students’ calendars so only two-thirds of them would be on campus at any one time.

The council, whose members were chosen by their peers, initially voted last month to adopt the year-round timetable, bringing on the sit-ins and heated protests from parents.

At North Hollywood High, the decision was in the hands of one person--Principal Catherine Lum. At the end of a meeting with the school’s more than 100 teachers, she announced she was scrapping year-round plans that had been imposed on her by the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

In February, the board voted to convert North Hollywood to a year-round calendar in light of a districtwide reconfiguration that bumps sixth-graders into middle school, and in turn bumps ninth-graders into high school.

Lum, fighting the switch tooth and nail, arranged a school tour by district brass that showed seven large classrooms could be partitioned into two rooms each to house more classes. District officials, obviously impressed, vowed to kick in about $65,000 to subdivide the rooms and buy additional furniture.

But the popular decision at both schools comes at a cost.

Fitting freshmen into the traditional calendar could cause an overflow, said North Hollywood High Assistant Principal Dave Smith, and that means some students might have to be bused to “capacity receiver schools.” The maximum capacity for the North Hollywood school is 3,200; 3,500 for Van Nuys.

Smith did not identify which schools the students might be bused to, but said they could be sent to any campus within a reasonable distance that has available seats.

The traditional calendar will also dictate that all classrooms be used every period, causing teachers to lug their supplies and books from classroom to classroom.

Currently, an English teacher, for instance, teaches five of six periods in the same classroom. The sixth period is designated a conference period. With the larger student body, the English teacher would have to vacate his or her classroom during the conference period and allow another teacher to hold a class in the room.

This can be a burden to teachers, Smith said, particularly for those who have file cabinets containing information they use for teaching.

“Their classroom is their home,” Smith said. “Now they may have two or three homes.”

According to early estimates, about 30% of teachers at both schools would have to change classrooms daily to handle the increased enrollment.

Now that the final decisions have been made at both schools, the work has just begun.

“The next step,” Van Nuys Principal Robert G. Scharf said, “is for us to plan and prepare as to how we will house our teachers and our classes. We are committed to making this work.”