Students Give Year-Round Schedule an F

As news spread through campus Wednesday that Van Nuys High is headed to a year-round schedule, students said they were not looking forward to the change, and parents scrambled to come up with alternatives.

“I will be separated from my friends, and I don’t want to go to school in the summertime because I have a job,” said Gohar Artemyian, a junior.

Board members for the Los Angeles Unified School District voted 6 to 1 Tuesday to put Van Nuys on a multitrack schedule in the 2001-02 school year. But the board gave Van Nuys parents three months to offer an alternative to ease overcrowding at the 3,600-student campus.

“Some of the tracks are good. Some are going to mess up students,” said senior Marsha Sheynin, who plans to graduate before the conversion. “I feel sorry for the students who are left here.”

Parents and students who object to the multitrack schedule say it will divide families, exhaust students and blemish Van Nuys’ reputation. The campus houses three magnet programs--instructing 1,300 students in the performing arts, math and science, and medicine--plus the neighborhood school and a night school for adults.

Protesting parents say allowing students to take classes at nearby Valley College or moving the adult school off campus would free up enough classroom space to keep Van Nuys on a regular calendar for at least a few more years.

The parents said they resented the board placing the responsibility on them--and not the district staff--to come up with a better idea.

“When did it become the parents’ job to do the job of the paid people?” Miriam Koenig asked.

Koenig and others expressed little hope that they will succeed in blocking the multitrack schedule. Last year, board members gave the communities of North Hollywood High School and Sepulveda Middle School a similar grace period to avoid conversion to a year-round schedule, but ultimately rejected a proposal to add portable classrooms and acquire off-campus buildings.

“They’re basically asking us to present them with a solution that doesn’t cost any more,” Koenig said. “They don’t want to spend any money.”

Robert Collins, the superintendent for the subdistrict that includes Van Nuys, said Wednesday that he will meet with a group of Van Nuys High parents next week to discuss possible options.

“Whether it’s feasible or not feasible at this point [to avoid a multitrack schedule], I can’t tell you unless we look at the models and look at the alternatives,” Collins said. “All of these alternatives come with some downsides.”

Year-round schedules are becoming common for California’s brimming campuses. In the LAUSD, Van Nuys would be the 19th of 49 senior high schools on a year-round schedule, and as many as 50 more schools are expected to scrap their traditional calendars by 2007.