Busing Plan Expands Due to Schedule

Van Nuys and North Hollywood high schools, which refused to adopt year-round calendars to handle mushrooming enrollment, will have to bus several hundred students to other San Fernando Valley campuses this fall--far more than originally expected, district officials said Friday.

As many as 600 ninth- and 10th-grade students expecting to enroll at Van Nuys High School will wind up at Birmingham or Taft high schools, while the number to be bused out of North Hollywood High for Taft and Reseda High School could not be confirmed, officials said.

Unaffected will be magnet students, previously enrolled students and previously enrolled students’ siblings, said Van Nuys Principal Russ Thompson.

Earlier this year, parents, students and teachers from both campuses vehemently fought the Los Angeles Unified School District’s plans to convert Van Nuys and North Hollywood high schools to year-round schedules to accommodate the influx of students as the schools expand from three years to four. Instead, the protesters preferred limiting enrollment and busing some students to other schools.

But at Van Nuys High School, officials said they severely underestimated how many students would be affected.

“When we made the decision to cap our school, we were thinking we would only be [busing] 150 or 200 kids,” said Charlie Wilken, co-chairman of a committee of parents, teachers and students at Van Nuys that voted to keep the school on a traditional calendar. “So now it’s a bigger problem than when we made the decision.”

Because Van Nuys High has a large percentage of minority students, it is required to have smaller class sizes under the district’s integration program, another impediment to taking in more students, said Bruce Takaguma, who oversees enrollment limits for the district.

Takaguma said district officials believe North Hollywood High will find itself in the same position as Van Nuys, but they will not be certain of exactly how many students must be bused until the start of the school year in September. (North Hollywood High School’s principal has been on vacation and was unavailable for comment, while Van Nuys’ Thompson was able to confirm how many students will be bused.)

Takaguma added that the district has already placed additional teachers at the receiver schools.

At Van Nuys, about 900 spaces in the non-magnet high school will be open for newly enrolled students. Those spaces will be assigned by lottery, based on the random selection of birth dates. School officials will hold the lottery Aug. 6 at the campus auditorium.

Students who don’t get into Van Nuys will have the choice of attending Birmingham, Taft or applying to open-enrollment schools. Those who choose Birmingham or Taft will be bused from Van Nuys High, school officials said. Those choosing open-enrollment campuses will be responsible for their own transportation.

All students, regardless of their ranking, are required to attend the first day of classes at Van Nuys on Sept. 4, when they will learn where they will be spending their school year. Any absent students--even if they have a secured slot--will forfeit their place, Thompson said.

For the young ninth-graders sent to other schools, the commute “is going to have an impact on those kids,” Thompson admitted. “But,” he added, “those schools have excellent reputations, so the kids will get a good education.”