Longer School Day Aims to Ease Campus Overcrowding

What high school student in his right mind would choose to go to school at 6:40 in the morning or stay until 8 at night? Sean Stewart would, and so would some of his classmates at Valencia High School, where 2,600 students pile onto a campus built for 2,000.

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 and expect the student body to nearly double in five years.

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 to draw the required two-thirds majority vote in last November’s election, falling short by less than 1%.

“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.”

In a recent survey, Valencia students and parents chose to extend their daily schedules rather than switch to year-round schools or put students on multiple tracks. Whether or not the bond passes, some students at Valencia High will have a 6:40 a.m. class next year before their 7:30 class they call “zero period.”

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

Assistant Supt. Mike von Buelow said classes will be offered that end as late as 8 p.m. within two years. The idea, he said, is to spread students out 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.”

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

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

Newhall Land & Farming 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 the district needs more classrooms, but she thinks Hart has enough money to expand without asking taxpayers to pitch in. The state will match about half of whatever the district funds locally for new schools.

“So with developers’ fees, that’s $200 million,” Noltemeyer 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 against 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.”

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While awaiting new schools, the district is encouraging more students to take advantage of off-campus opportunities, such as taking courses at the local community college, 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. “We will have every classroom on every campus fill every period of the day. We’re in a world of hurt if this bond doesn’t pass.”

If the election turnout mirrors that in 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.