L.A. Cuts Back Year-Round Schools

By Jean Merl and Erika Hayasaki

Sept. 6, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writers

When the opening bell rings today at South Gate High School, it will, for the first time in nearly a generation, signal the actual start of a new school year.

For years, scores of Los Angeles schools have worked on year-round schedules that relieved overcrowding but interfered with students’ having the classes they needed, summer jobs they wanted or clubs and activities they hoped to join. Nearly 200 of the most crowded schools, including South Gate, had to shave 17 days off the school year to make room for everyone.

This week, for nearly two dozen schools, including Van Nuys High and Ramona Elementary, the deeply disliked year-round schedule is coming to an end, the first widely tasted fruits of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s $9.2-billion program to build new schools.

At South Gate, the year-round schedule has been imposed since 1981, long enough for Jesus Angulo to begin with it in first grade and stay on it through graduation, then work with it as a teacher and an assistant principal.

Now he is principal of the new South East High School, which opens today on a traditional calendar. The school, which is also in South Gate, is one of 13 new ones to open this week and 32 to open during this academic year across the nation’s second-largest school district.

“Just to have the continuity of all the teachers and kids within the same system creates a better learning environment,” Angulo said. “No matter how hard you tried, there was always one track that got shortchanged.” Trying to make up for the lost 17 days in three-track schools by adding time to each school day didn’t work, Angulo and others said.

The traditional single-track school year “is going to maximize learning,” Angulo said. “I foresee a reduced number of dropouts and more kids entering universities,” he said.

In addition to the 22 L.A. Unified schools and one charter school that are moving to the traditional September-to-June schedule, 35 are switching to a year-round calendar that gives them 180 days of classes instead of the 163 offered at the district’s most jampacked campuses.

About 85,000 students are moving off the shorter calendar, raising hopes among parents and school officials that the added days in class will lead to improved achievement.

“Now we’ll get those 17 days back, and we can use our summer the way it should be used, to help our children catch up,” said Susan Lio Arcaris, principal of Ramona Elementary School in east Hollywood, which is switching to a traditional calendar after more than 20 years of operating year-round.

“It’s going to be wonderful to have everybody in the same place in the instructional program at the same time,” Arcaris said.

As is the case at many of the district’s most crowded schools, Ramona’s largely minority students all qualify for the federal government’s free or reduced-price lunch program, and many are just learning English.

They are typical of the youngsters who have borne the brunt of the severe overcrowding during the many years in which the district did not build new schools.

The construction program is expected to add about 160 schools over a decade, helping the district approach its goal of putting its nearly 740,000 students on a September-to-June calendar in their own neighborhoods.

Last year the district settled a class-action suit over inequities in California’s public education system, pledging to put all schools on a 180-day school year -- the state standard -- by 2012.

District officials believe they might reach that goal sooner and are asking voters to approve another local bond measure in November to finish the building.

After years of growth, district enrollment has begun to decline somewhat, most notably in the elementary grades. But because overcrowding has been so severe, district officials said, they still need to complete the full building program to accommodate all their students.

For the 2005-06 school year, 208 of the district’s roughly 800 campuses will remain on multitrack year-round calendars, 87 of them on the three-track, 163-day academic year.

Van Nuys High School, which switched to the three-track shortened calendar amid strong protests four years ago, returns to a traditional calendar today.

The school will be crowded for several months because nearby new schools, which will take some Van Nuys High students, aren’t yet ready. But students and teachers said the change was worth putting up with crowding for a while.

Robert Takano, magnet coordinator at Van Nuys High School, remembered the controversy when the district ordered the campus to go year-round in 2001. Teachers and parents protested as administrators shuffled schedules. The new calendar divided students into three calendars, or tracks, and students protested that not all courses could be offered during every track. It separated faculty members from department colleagues.

“Now we’re coming back together,” Takano said in an interview last week.

Magnet students complained that the year-round schedule cut into summer academic enrichment programs that helped them prepare for college. Parents fretted they couldn’t coordinate vacations or child care with youngsters on different school calendars.

“For the students, it’s going to mean more flexibility in schedules, a greater chance of getting what they want,” Takano said.

This summer, Van Nuys High finally had time to rest, Takano said. Maintenance workers spent the last several weeks repairing lights, floors and wiring for new intercom and computer systems.

One day last week, ladders stood in hallways and maintenance trucks were parked on the campus quad. Some students said having the summer off enabled them to take jobs; others talked of how the year-round calendar disrupted student activities.

Getting everyone together in the marching band to rehearse together “used to be a hassle,” said senior Ignacio Marquez, 17, as he practiced trombone in a campus hallway.

“Some kids were on vacation,” Marquez said. “We had a lot of absences. Now, we’re all on one track, so it’s easier.”

Araceli Cruz, 17, a senior, got to attend band camp this summer instead of taking classes on the widely loathed schedule known as B track.

B track is notorious throughout the district for having the most erratic calendar, the most inexperienced teachers and the fewest magnet and Advanced Placement courses. After returning from break, B track students have four days until their Advanced Placement exams and 18 days before they must take the standardized California Achievement Test.

“They used to cut our semester in half,” Cruz said. “We would go on vacation, then come back and take finals after a long vacation.”

At Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter School in Hollywood, campus leaders were able to parlay the opening of a district primary center nearby into a long-held dream to switch to a traditional single-track calendar this year.

“Our parents broke into applause when we announced” the change, said co-director Andrew Johnsen. “They’ve always wanted this.”

The school opened a week ahead of district-operated traditional calendar schools. The summer break allowed for the installation of a grassy playground and shiny play equipment, the repainting of all the buildings in hues of terra cotta, periwinkle and green and the proper waxing of floors, with sufficient time for the coats to dry between applications.

For students and teachers, the change means not having to share classrooms with those on another track and not losing lesson time to pack up and then reorganize classrooms with every two-month break.

“It’s very exciting,” said Jennifer Brown, who teaches a combined class of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. “Not only do our students get 17 days more of school, but they also won’t have two months off right in the middle of the school year.”

Adrineh Markarian, who teaches a full-day kindergarten class, said the new schedule also suits the school’s many Latino immigrant families better because it provides a 3 1/2 -week winter break, long enough for travel to Mexico for the holidays, a tradition in many families.

“It’s a nice break, but it won’t disrupt our students’ education,” Markarian said.

In deciding which schools to take off year-round operation, Larry Carletta, administrative coordinator in the school management services office, said district officials looked first at which arrangements would enable the most students to have a 180-day academic year. That meant, for example, putting a new elementary school in North Hollywood into year-round operation -- although on a four-track, 180-day schedule -- and giving nearby Oxnard Street Elementary a traditional two-semester school year for the first time since 1983.

The switch to the 180-day calendar instead of 163 days is particularly important for many students, Carletta said. “Over 13 years, that 17 days translates into nearly a year less of instruction, so this is really good news.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Changing schedules

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s $9.2-billion building program is helping put nearly two dozen year-round, multitrack schools onto a traditional two-semester calendar this year.

Elementary schools

Barton Hill, San Pedro

Cheremoya Avenue, Hollywood

Coughlin, Pacoima

* Figueroa Street, South Los Angeles

Logan Street, Echo Park

* Manchester Avenue, South Los Angeles

Micheltorena Street, Silver Lake

Osceola Street, Sylmar

* Oxnard Street, North Hollywood

* Ramona, East Hollywood

* Santa Monica Boulevard Community Charter, Hollywood (independently run)