An A for Promise

This week marks the official end of summer and, although classes have started on many campuses across the San Fernando and surrounding valleys, the beginning of the school year. Each new year brings new promise as kids in new clothes fill classrooms that still smell a little stuffy after three empty months. This year, though, the youngest and the oldest students seem poised for a great academic term.

In Van Nuys, the first Los Angeles Unified School District campus built just for kindergartners opened last week with a simple philosophy: Give the youngest students a place close to home where they feel safe and important. Primary centers separate young students--usually kindergartners through second-graders--and allow them to get used to the idea of school without having to contend with older kids or riding the bus to distant campuses.

From the district’s perspective, primary centers offer a cheaper way to reduce overcrowding on elementary school campuses. The Van Nuys primary center--unimaginatively named Van Nuys Primary Center A--resides in new buildings on the campus of Van Nuys High School. Over the next decade, district officials plan to build 20 more primary centers. Six should open by next summer, including two in the Valley.

As primary centers help get young students off to the right start, Cal State Northridge prepares them for the working world and beyond. In its 40th year, CSUN largely has bounced back from the devastation wrought nearly five years ago by the Northridge earthquake. Enrollment is up and the campus won a healthy boost in its annual budget, giving administrators, teachers and students reason to hope that brighter times lie ahead for the beleaguered university.

CSUN plans to use the extra money to hire more full-time faculty members. The school also plans to spend state and federal disaster money to build new facilities and turn the bad luck of the earthquake into good fortune. Both initiatives translate into a better learning environment for students.

To be sure, schools across northern Los Angeles County suffer severe and wide-ranging problems. But the efforts at two very different levels to better prepare young people for their academic careers and the rest of their lives hold the same kind of promise that eager students feel on the first day of a new term.