Back to School for Year-Round Students

Despite the sticky heat of summer, July marks back-to-school time for many Valley students who are enrolled in year-round schools, particularly elementary-age youngsters in the East Valley.

Although start days vary from school to school, Friday was opening day at Noble Avenue Elementary School in North Hills, where smiling students arrived dressed in the suggested school uniform of white shirts and navy pants, jumpers or skirts.

A day after the holiday, about 85% of the expected 1,000 Noble students were in class Friday, said Principal Ruth Jackson. Because of the heat, all classrooms are air-conditioned and outside activities are curtailed when the mercury soars, she said.

At Noble, where high enrollment dictated a year-round calendar five years ago, students get the same education as those on a traditional schedule, Jackson said.

“The vacations are just spread out differently,” she explained. “There are two smaller breaks a year instead of one long one. One of the benefits [of year-round schooling] is that students don’t forget what they’re learning like they do over a long summer vacation.”

Like many schools in the northeast Valley, Montague Street Elementary School in Pacoima will start classes Monday, said Principal Diane Pritchard.

To keep students cool in summer months, she said, one curriculum addition has been made. Namely, the more than 800 students who begin classes in July will get to participate in the “summer pool program” in August at Montague, learning to swim in a big portable pool.

Even though they miss much of the traditional summer vacation, adaptable elementary school students don’t feel deprived in starting classes, Pritchard said.

“Our children are so used to [year-round schooling], because we’ve been doing it for eight years, that it’s just business as usual for the students.”

Besides, she said, in large-enrollment schools such as Montague, the staggered year-round schedule in which only two-thirds of students are on campus at any one time, sure beats the alternative: busing students out of their neighborhood to less-crowded schools across the Valley.

This week also marked the start of school for the Valley’s first three year-round high schools--San Fernando, Francis Polytechnic and Monroe.