13 New Valley Schools Proposed to Ease Crowding

A massive $1.82-billion construction plan to stave off severe overcrowding in Los Angeles public schools calls for 51 new schools, 13 of them in the San Fernando Valley, plus 458 portable classrooms that will be parked at existing campuses.

The expansion is needed to avert an impending crisis in available seats for students, say Los Angeles Unified School District officials who will discuss the details of the proposal at a board meeting Monday.

Nearly 80,000 anticipated new enrollees in the next decade are expected to burst the seams of schools already coping with record-high enrollment.

In addition to adding classrooms, the plan calls for many existing schools to make the shift to year-round calendars, so they can operate at full capacity to ride out the population boom.

The current situation is a dramatic reversal of fortune for a district that just a few years back was shuttering underused schools and using openings in others to promote school choice for parents.

No one could have imagined 45,000 new students enrolling in the district within the last four years, said Bruce Takeguma, the district’s assistant director for school management services.

Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias distributed the expansion plan to school board members last week, telling them in a memo it represents “the best collaborative efforts of various divisions and offices within the district.”

The proposal was drawn up based on recommendations the Board of Education adopted in December.

The board is not scheduled to vote on the dictionary-thick plan Monday.

It contains, in addition to the plan favored by district officials, several alternatives, some costing more, others less.

The most expensive course of action, according to the plan, would be to build enough schools to keep all students in neighborhood campuses on traditional schedules. The cost of that alternative was put at a prohibitive $4.9 billion. The least expensive alternative to school overcrowding, according to the plan, would be to maintain current class sizes and shift any schools with more students than seats to year-round staggered schedules.

The alternative preferred by district officials cites funding sources for only $1.47 billion of the plan’s estimated cost. That money would come from Proposition BB funding for modernization and new construction and from the state’s matching funds program for school building.

The remaining $350 million needed, the report says, will “have to come from other resources, or project priorities will dictate how available funds will be allocated.”

As if to underscore the dire need for classrooms, the plan’s unveiling comes on the same day the number of available seats under the open enrollment program is being released. The figures reveal a dramatic reduction in school choice from just four years ago when the option first became available under California state law.

In the Valley, which would see the construction of 13 new schools--seven in the East Valley--under the proposed plan, just over 500 seats will be available in elementary schools, down from a high of more than 3,000 in 1994.

Even the West Valley is feeling the effects of the “baby boom echo,” with open seats in elementary schools in one part of the area dropping from 828 to zero for fall.

Most construction called for in the new plan is for elementary and primary centers, 21 of which are proposed to relieve overcrowding in existing schools in South-Central Los Angeles and downtown.

According to LAUSD projections, peak enrollment for the elementary schools will start next year. High schools are expected to feel the brunt of the population boom in 2006.

Board of Education member David Tokofsky said the time to act is now.

“For the first time in years we actually have money for new construction in Proposition BB,” he said.

But Tokofsky expressed doubt that the district’s proposal will alleviate concerns about quality of education or satisfy the desire of many parents to see a return to a more traditional school year.

“We absolutely have to have a place to put all these kids,” Tokofsky said. “But I think we are just ending up with massive holding tanks.”