4 New L.A. Schools Will Open Late

Construction delays at four Los Angeles Unified School District campuses have forced officials to postpone opening the new schools by a month.

For the roughly 3,200 students scheduled to attend the informally named Panorama, Arleta and North Hollywood high schools -- all in the San Fernando Valley -- classes will begin Oct. 3 instead of early September.

To make up for the lost time, those schools will run on compressed schedules with shorter vacations. The two-week winter break will be cut to one week, and a five-day spring break will be shortened to two days, said Dan Isaacs, the district’s chief operating officer.

At the fourth campus, Belmont Elementary in Koreatown, doors will open in mid-August instead of July 5, and plans to operate on a year-round, multitrack schedule have been scrapped for the first year.

Much of the construction is completed, but contractors have struggled to find enough skilled labor to keep pace on such work as electrical wiring, flooring and windows, said Jim Cowell, a facilities executive for the district.

“It’s tough to go right from construction to kids without an adequate amount of time,” Cowell said.

He added that such delays are not unprecedented. Last year, four schools opened late as well.

The new schools are part of an ambitious, $19-billion construction and repair project that aims to build about 150 schools and rehabilitate hundreds of others in the district, one of the nation’s largest, most crowded school systems.