Year-Round School Schedule

Re “Parents Fighting 12-Month School,” March 5.

North Hollywood High School being relegated to year-round status reflects a crisis that has been more than 10 years in the making. The Board of Education and city planners saw it coming. They have access to demographics. They know that all the Valley’s high schools will be pushed to year-round schedules by the year 2005 when, incidentally, we will also be 40,000 high school seats short district-wide.

How could all the powers that be have been so shortsighted? How can they now offer our students only year-round as their solution? Have they noticed that year-round schools have lower test scores than those on a traditional calendar? And that they still have class sizes of over 40 students to one teacher? How could the [Los Angeles] building department have issued, and continue to issue, building permits for homes, duplexes and apartment buildings without making sure that even one new school was built?

Where will the students be housed who will live in the apartment houses and homes currently being constructed in the part of the Valley that serves North Hollywood High? I have counted enough new structures to house at least 300 additional students in the area of Studio City alone. Most of the elementary schools that feed into North Hollywood are already year-round (due to overcrowding), and the ones that aren’t are bursting with bungalows and are full to capacity.

There are not enough private schools to handle 40,000 students if there are no spots for them in public education. Our current Board of Education did not create this problem. I commend them for their efforts in trying to find solutions, but unless they start working with our planning department so that homes and schools are built at a commensurate rate, the quality of education for our students is at serious risk. Until the present time North Hollywood High School has been one of the true success stories of the troubled LAUSD.

It is regrettable that this success will almost certainly be diminished as a consequence of the year-round proposal. Year-round is a poor patch and especially unacceptable for a school that has reached the quality of North Hollywood High.

LAURA PETERS

PTA President

Walter Reed Middle School

North Hollywood