LAUSD Enrollment Jumps 2.3%

At Langdon Avenue Elementary School in North Hills, space is so limited that school psychologists are reduced to counseling students in a stuffy storage room slightly larger than a closet.

“We’ve got classes in the library, we’ve got classes in the auditorium. We’re so crowded in here we can’t even see straight,” Langdon Principal Robert Albin said Wednesday.

His school is not alone. Los Angeles Unified School District officials on Wednesday announced that their demographers significantly underestimated this year’s enrollment. Kindergarten through 12th-grade enrollment jumped 2.3% from last year--an increase of 15,592 and about 6,000 more than anticipated.

The student population is now 697,097.

The latest count is bad news for district officials already nervous about forecasts that its student body will grow by 80,000 over the next decade, and additional evidence to support their call for new schools.

“The urgency of our need for new schools and sufficient classroom space cannot be more evident,” said LAUSD Supt. Ruben Zacarias. “These numbers make it imperative that the public support our efforts to locate convenient sites and build more schools.”

This year’s jump advances recent heavy enrollment gains. The district has experienced an increase of 60,000 students over the past four years--nearly equal to the student body of San Francisco Unified.

An estimated 13,000 students ride buses to schools with less and less room to seat them. Some of those rides take as long as 90 minutes.

Most of the growth has been in Central, South-Central, the area east of downtown and parts of the San Fernando Valley.

Albin, whose school enrolled about 1,600 students this fall, said he asked for two bungalows to accommodate his exploding student population, but relief has not arrived.

Enrollment in East Valley schools has surged along with a boom in jobs and lower-cost housing in the area, said Gordon Wohlers, the district’s assistant superintendent of policy research and development.

“Families are staying in places like Sylmar and Sun Valley because there are jobs and it’s basically a good place to live,” he said.

To ease the crunch somewhat, the district has already ordered Newcastle Avenue Elementary School in Reseda--closed for more than 10 years--to be reopened next year after it has been renovated.

Albin also pointed to the influx of immigrants settling in the northeast Valley as a factor in increasing enrollment.

“We’re surrounded by apartments on all sides,” Albin said. “People are uniting with their families, and the kids seem to be coming out of the walls.”

Although Langdon will soon get mobile bungalows for additional class space, Albin said that won’t solve the problem.

“The more bungalows they bring in, the less playground space we have,” he said. “The real solution would be to acquire some land for classes. That would truly be the answer.”

At Liggett Street Elementary School in Panorama City, the population has grown steadily from 900 students in 1990 to more than 1,400 students today. But Principal David Sanchez said the school was able to neutralize the overcrowding problem with a year-round class schedule.

“If we had not done that, we would be busing [out] about 400 students this year,” Sanchez said.

“We do have a master plan for building,” said school board President Victoria Castro. “But until those schools and rooms are actually in place and ready to receive students, the number of young people riding buses to relieve overcrowding is only going to grow. It’s regrettable, but it’s a fact.

“The problem right now is that there’s more students on buses and the bus rides are getting longer,” she said.

The squeeze is so tight at Cahuenga Elementary School that 1,575 students spend hours each day riding buses to a shrinking number of other sites.

“Many of our families are new to this country, and they have a hard time understanding why their kids can’t go to their local school,” said Principal Lloyd Houske. “Yet, when a new child comes in, we often have to call 25 other schools in search of available space.”

Waiting expectantly for the arrival of her 10-year-old daughter, Natahly, who is bused each day from Cahuenga to Encino, Guadalupe Hernandez said, “This is just not right.”

“We have to build more schools in this area for people who live nearby--we only live two blocks away,” she said. “Natahly’s been taking the bus for three years.”

As it stands, 82 schools are filled to capacity on their current operating calendars, and 125 other schools, now within 3% of their capacity, are very likely to be filled next year, according to Assistant Supt. Gordon Wohlers.

In response to this crunch, the Los Angeles school board has approved a $1.82-billion master plan that recommends building 51 schools: nine high schools, five middle schools, 13 elementary schools, 20 primary centers and four continuation high schools.

District officials propose paying for the construction with funds from Proposition BB, which was passed by voters in 1997, and the $9.2-billion state school bond measure on the Nov. 3 ballot, Proposition 1A.

If the schools are not built, as many as 79,000 students would need to be bused away from their neighborhoods by 2008--provided seats could be found at other district schools.

“This would not be a good thing for the boys and girls and their families in Los Angeles,” Wohlers said. “It would mean many, many more traveling students, schools receiving many more children, adding many more portable classrooms, and changing many more calendars to year-round schedules.”