Year-Round Means Watered Down

Seven years before the landmark Brown desegregation decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, California outlawed segregation of schoolchildren by race. The suit had been brought by Gonzalo Mendez, a tenant farmer and father of three school-age children, against the Westminster school district in Orange County, which had separate schools for “Mexicans” and whites.

Today the Los Angeles Unified School District is operating two school systems, separate and unequal just as surely as those of 50 years ago. The students receiving the short end of the stick today are those who attend the overcrowded multitrack year-round schools.

To most people, school overcrowding means classes that are too large. In the LAUSD, it also means having fewer days of school.

I teach at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. Because of severe overcrowding, we have 163 days of school a year. Wilson High in nearby El Sereno is not overcrowded, so it provides 180 days.

When the first year-round high schools began in Los Angeles in 1981, the move was hailed as both practical and an educational reform. Why have a school sit idle for three months during the summer while students vegetate? (Ironically, students in year-round schools are off four months per year.)

Year-round schools address the overcrowding issue by dividing the faculty and student body into tracks, each with its own calendar. The semesters are shorter, supposedly remedied by having a much longer school day. We take turns going on vacation and using the classrooms. The school thereby gains in capacity.

Garfield was built to house about 2,500 students. With the multitrack schedule and additional bungalow classrooms, we now house up to 5,000 students a year. And despite all the shifting about, academic classes still are huge, often with 40 or more students per teacher.

The most harmful feature of the multitrack system, especially at the high school level, is the shorter school year. The LAUSD bureaucrats argue that a shorter year with longer school days adds up to the same number of “instructional minutes.” This argument cannot hide the fact that some kids in LAUSD are getting less education than others.

Now there is talk about lengthening the school year in California. Unfortunately, that is not an option for students in year-round schools; it is not mathematically possible to have a school year longer than 163 days when one-third of the students are off-track at any given time.

The year-round schedule calls for 12 additional minutes per class period. But this certainly does not compensate for 3 1/2 fewer weeks of school, which amounts to 17 homework nights lost. And I cover much less material now than when I had 180 days instead of 163.

Does anyone in the LAUSD care or even understand that these kids are getting a watered-down educational opportunity?

Many students in these overcrowded year-round schools already have many obstacles to overcome: Frequently, English is not their first language; their parents may have only a grade school education; their families are poor. And now we are giving them fewer days in school than students in suburban areas.

And precisely who are the students in these multitrack schools? Predominantly Latino and black students.

Is this really that different from the segregation of 50 years ago?

We have been misled by our educational leaders into neglecting this situation for 17 years. At best, the multitrack schools should have been sold as a temporary solution until more schools were built. Now we are asked to believe that year-round school is fine and that 163 longer school days a year is acceptable. As long as the school board believes that, there is no urgency to build new schools.

High schools need not cost $75 million to $100 million each, as will the new Belmont and South Gate campuses. Bravo Medical Magnet and the Downtown Business Magnet have shown that small, nontraditional high schools do work well. Why have we built only these two new high schools in 20 years?

At the very least, the superintendent, LAUSD board members and principals should level with parents and voters. This might energize voters to pass school bonds and pressure Sacramento for more school construction funds.

To continue to maintain that 163 equals 180 reflects a profound misunderstanding of how students learn and achieve. At worst, it reflects an attempt to dupe parents and voters into believing than all LAUSD children are being treated equitably. The multitrack year-round schools are an inherently inferior educational experience for students attending them just as surely as Westminster’s racial segregation was 50 years ago. As in the Gonzalo Mendez case, perhaps the only remedy is a lawsuit that will document just how unequal and harmful this system really is.