School Resists Year-Round Classes

Recognized nationally for its academic excellence, North Hollywood High School is facing a new kind of test as parents and school officials try to come up with an alternative to going year-round.

If they do not find a solution, the 3,500 students at the campus will be divided into three tracks and become part of a year-round program in July to ease overcrowding. Seventeen other high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District are already on year-round academic calendars.

Students, parents and the principal say that the change would be especially hard on their school, which is home to two so-called magnet programs--one for highly gifted students and one for students specializing in zoology--as well as two academies that prepare students for transportation and teaching careers.

“They are all able to take classes together, and that’s what we would be robbed of,” said Marilyn Morrison, who heads a parents’ group that is trying to find more classroom space as an alternative to disrupting the academic calendar.

Switching to a year-round schedule would allow North Hollywood High to increase its enrollment to 4,350, forcing fewer neighborhood students to take long bus rides to distant West San Fernando Valley campuses, district officials said.

North Hollywood sends 410 students to other Valley schools, while an additional 123 go voluntarily under the district’s open enrollment plan.

“The resident students are being bused out, but their voice is not heard,” said Gordon Wohlers, the district’s assistant superintendent for policy research and development.

Under a policy approved in 1998, high schools that send more than 250 local students to other district campuses must switch to year-round schedules.

This is not the first time such a debate has arisen at North Hollywood High. In 1996, administrators recommended that the school convert to a year-round schedule, but the school board voted down the plan.

But continued overcrowding throughout the 711,000-student district, especially in the northeast Valley, is forcing the conversion, administrators said.

Supporters of year-round schedules contend that the system makes the best of limited space by assigning students to one of three tracks. Two tracks are in session at any given time while a third is on vacation.

Furthermore, supporters said, North Hollywood’s special programs could be preserved by keeping students within those programs on the same tracks.

Critics argue that the nontraditional breaks make class scheduling difficult, cause students to forget what they have learned and force parents to find out-of-school activities for their children.

Because North Hollywood students have achieved so much, Principal John Hyland said, any disruption is especially worrisome.

Although the 244 students in the school’s Highly Gifted Magnet receive wide attention, he said, hundreds of others are ambitious scholars too. Of the 580 students who took Advanced Placement exams at the school last year, 400 were from outside the Highly Gifted program, he said.

One idea under discussion is an extended-year calendar that would divide classes into morning and evening sessions. Such a school year would run into the summer but would not contain midyear breaks. This schedule has never been tried in a district school, Hyland said.

Some North Hollywood parents believe that the school could buy time to look for a long-term solution by adding temporary classrooms and increasing enrollment over the short term.

But according to a 1992 consent decree, a district high school cannot have more than 3,600 students on campus at the same time. That decree ended the district’s legal battle with a group of minority families that had sued to ensure that inner-city schools were given as many resources as those in wealthier neighborhoods.

The cap was designed to prevent the district from growing mammoth campuses, said Lou Holman, a lawyer for the families, who cited research suggesting that students learn better in smaller schools.

Any plan that would break the 3,600-student cap would have to be approved by Holman and other lawyers for the families who sued the district. Holman said they have never given approval to such a plan.

Parents are prepared to argue that with academies and more specialized programs, students can be given a small-school atmosphere at North Hollywood even if the enrollment grows past 3,600, Morrison said.

But whatever they decide, parents opposing the year-round schedule face an uphill battle because their proposals must win broad support among teachers and parents before they can go forward, Hyland said.

So, as adults try to work out a solution, some students, such as 14-year-old Candy Zamora, are bracing for the calendar change.

“I probably won’t like it,” said the ninth-grader. “But I’ll get used to it.”