School Girds for 12-Month Schedule

As overcrowding forces Van Nuys High School to move to a year-round calendar this summer, teachers, students and the principal say the change will be particularly difficult because the campus has the district’s largest magnet enrollment.

The Los Angeles Board of Education is expected to give final approval Tuesday to a plan to place Van Nuys High on a year-round schedule to begin July 2. The plan is designed to ease congestion at the 3,600-student campus that buses 250 area students to other schools because it cannot accommodate them.

“At first it was pretty unacceptable, but now everyone is doing the best they can to come to terms with it,” said student body president Marina Rozhansky, 17, who protested at a Board of Education meeting in January when the decision was announced.

Although Van Nuys High also had the option to extend the school year or split the school day into two sessions, administrators decided the best choice was the multitrack schedule that will make room for an additional 1,400 students.

Within five years, most high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District will have converted to a year-round schedule, casualties of explosive growth and the district’s failure to build schools. More than half of middle schools will have to run year-round.

Twelve-month schedules have become a primary solution to overcrowding in a growing number of California districts because they allow schools to serve more students in shortened, overlapping terms.

Last July, North Hollywood High became the first in Los Angeles since 1996 to go year-round.

“It’s been very tough,” said Principal John Hyland. “It’s very difficult on students because days are longer and they have to accomplish more in a shorter [term]. We’re still trying to find solutions.”

Van Nuys High Principal Herm Clay has spent the last few months trying to figure out how to divide the schedules of his 160 teachers, which students will be assigned to a particular track and how to divide the school’s three magnets--math-science, performing arts and medicine. One-third of Van Nuys High’s students are enrolled in magnet programs.

“We’re walking into unknown territory,” Clay said.

Six teachers have asked for transfers because of the upcoming change, and Clay is concerned about maintaining cohesiveness when one-third of his staff is gone during each track.

“The first year, everybody has a hard time with it,” said Sharon Shafer, a special education teacher who has worked for the district for 30 years and taught at year-round schools. “It’s hard to know how to prepare. But it gets better.”

Arlene Rose, a junior in the medical magnet, said she is disappointed that she will not graduate with some of her best friends.

“It’s terrible,” she said. “For senior year, everybody is supposed to be together, but now we’ll be split up.”