Students Pick Odd Hours Over Year-Round School

What high school student in his right mind would choose to go to school at 6:40 a.m. or stay until 8 at night? Sean Stewart would, and so would some of his classmates at Valencia High School.

With 2,600 students piling into a campus built for 2,000, something has to give. In a recent survey, Valencia students and parents said they’d rather start early or stay late than, for example, switch to year-round schools.

Administrators in the William S. Hart Union High School District estimate they will have to find room for 6,000 new students over the next two years. Within five years, they expect the study body to nearly double.

“I’d rather stay late in the evening or come early in the morning than be crowded in a classroom during the day,” Sean said. “After you’ve been in classrooms for 12 years, you know the difference between a crowded one and a not-crowded one.”

The district is pushing a $52-million bond on the June 6 ballot to help pay for five new schools in the 15,000-student district. The same bond package failed by less than 1% in an election last November.

Whether or not the bond passes, students at Valencia High will have a 6:40 a.m. class next year before the 7:30 morning class they call the “0 period.”

“What is that going to be called?” said senior Sara Cruz. “The -1 period?”

Assistant Supt. Mike von Buelow said classes will be offered as late as 8 p.m. within two years. The idea, he said, is to spread students over more class periods to thin the crowd.

The blessings of a suburban frontier in prosperous times that have made Santa Clarita the fastest growing city in Los Angeles County are making its schools among the most crowded, said Valencia Assistant Principal Les Luxmore.

Neat rows of hundreds of houses, most built in the last decade, line the ridge across from the high school all the way to the horizon. A vacant lot directly in front is earmarked for a new business development. A second business park and an ice rink are going up across from the student parking lot.

“We are really bulging here,” Luxmore said. “We’ve been here six years and we have the same crowding problems of the much, much older schools.”

Valencia High already has 32 bungalows in what used to be a staff parking lot. Senior Varuni Panditha said there once was room to spare in classrooms, but now lunch lines are so long that it’s time to return to class when the last students are just getting their plates.

Yet, shorter lunch periods are scheduled next year. So are more “traveling teachers,” instructors who have no permanent room but wheel their wares around on carts from one space to the next all day.

Overcrowding has become an issue at all of Hart’s 13 campuses. The 30-year-old Arroyo Seco Junior High School was built for 990 students but houses about 1,600 in the original classrooms and 26 portable buildings. Additional classrooms and plumbing and electrical repairs are planned for the other schools.

The total proposal would cost $294 million. The state is expected to fund $143 million, and the area’s real estate developers $99 million. While development fees help offset the cost of building new schools, development continues to feed Santa Clarita’s schools with new students.

Newhall Land & Farm Co., the area’s largest developer, has gained approval for Newhall Ranch, which will add more than 21,000 homes to the district over 20 years.

Cam Noltemeyer of the Committee for Safe Schools and Fair Taxation, agrees that the district needs more classrooms, but she believes that Hart has enough money to expand without asking taxpayers to pitch in. The state will match half of whatever the district funds locally for new schools.

“So with developers’ fees, that’s $200 million,” she said. “Why don’t they use that to build, and show us they will manage it well? If they need more later, then come back and ask.”

Connie Worden-Roberts, president of the Santa Clarita Chamber of Commerce, said balancing the city’s growth in the past decade with its need for new schools has been tricky.

“In a perfect world, we’d say build the schools first and then build the homes,” Worden-Roberts said. “We’re on the threshold between maintaining high-quality education and erosion of the quality of education. Without this bond, you will see the erosion.”

While awaiting new schools, the district is encouraging more students to take advantage of off-campus opportunities, such as courses at College of the Canyons, for dual high school and college credit, Von Buelow said.

“Even with that, we will still be in an uncomfortable position,” he said.

If the election turnout mirrors that of last November, the fate of Hart schools will be determined by a tiny group of Santa Clarita’s 145,000 residents. With only 15% of registered voters casting ballots, the bond was defeated by 125 votes.