New School to End Long Bus Rides for Van Nuys Children

A new elementary school to be built next year in Van Nuys will bring hundreds of students back to their neighborhood from far-flung campuses across the San Fernando Valley.

But the new campus for kindergartners through fifth-graders will bring little relief from year-round schedules, officials said.

Overcrowding has forced nearby Hazeltine, Sylvan Park and Van Nuys elementary schools to adopt year-round schedules, and the opening of the 600-student campus will do nothing to change that. The new school also will operate year-round and, if Los Angeles Unified School District projections are accurate, it will be filled to capacity the day it opens.

Even so, Angela Gonzalez, the mother of three Hazeltine students, said the new school can’t open fast enough. As a parent representative at Hazeltine, Gonzalez has fielded complaints from Van Nuys mothers whose children are bused to schools as far away as Woodland Hills.

“It’s great news to hear of a new school because when we send our kids so far away, they are no longer part of the community,” Gonzalez said. “As soon as the bell rings they’re left behind.”

A mother with one child at Hazeltine and another bused to Kittridge Elementary in Van Nuys asked Gonzalez to help get her children into the same school.

“It was a circus just getting them to school every morning,” Gonzalez said.

Another mother said if her children arrived at Hazeltine two minutes late and missed the bus to Woodland Hills, they had to wait two hours for the next bus. As a result, Gonzalez said, they would miss nearly three hours of school.

“I’m involved in the school and I belong to all the committees because I live a block away from the school and I can walk over there at any time,” Gonzalez said. “If my child were shipped off to Tujunga or Woodland Hills, I would never participate in any school stuff.”

Of the 1,500 students registered at Hazeltine, about 300 are bused to four schools, including Tujunga and West Hills. Van Nuys Elementary buses 200 students to seven schools, including campuses in Granada Hills, Canoga Park and Sun Valley. Sylvan Park is expected to exceed capacity and begin busing students this fall.

Set for ground breaking Aug. 23, the Van Nuys school is one of dozens in the works across the district that are designed to curb the need for busing and year-round school calendars.

Construction is expected to begin within 18 months on a new, 1,000-student elementary school in North Hills and one for 700 students in North Hollywood, board member Caprice Young said Tuesday.

But Gordon Wohlers, the district’s associate superintendent of planning assessment and research, said the Los Angeles district has no illusions about how much the new school will ease overcrowding.

A handful of new schools opening in the next five years will not be enough to thin out student populations sufficiently to return to traditional semester calendars, he said.

“My concern is that those schools [in the East Valley] will continue to grow,” Wohlers said. “We will be able to bring back the majority of children who are on buses traveling to the West Valley, but they will still be in crowded schools.”

The district has spent five years studying the Van Nuys site--a four-acre parcel at Vanowen Street and Columbus Avenue that currently houses a small building for Van Nuys High School continuing education students. The land once was used by the high school’s agriculture students to raise flowers, tomatoes and chickens.

Mike Scinto, senior project manager for LAUSD’s new facilities group, said the district decided only 18 months ago to use the property for an elementary school after considering making it a hospital magnet or a children’s center.

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More Walking, Less Busing

A new elementary school to be built in Van Nuys will bring hundreds of students who have been bused to schools around the San Fernando Valley back to their neighborhood. Hazeltine and Van Nuys elementary schools currently bus students as far away as West Hills and Tujunga.