Officials to discuss creating new school calendar

Glendale school officials are launching an effort to create a new school calendar that could include a start date closer to the end of August. The move comes after parents complained that the current school year and the next one were much too early for their liking.

When school began this year on Aug. 10, Montrose parent Sarah Rush created an online petition that thousands of residents signed to urge school officials to push back the start date.

In response, school officials said on Tuesday they will seek parents’ input through three community meetings, and create a committee to shape a new calendar based on feedback they receive.

However, the 2016-17 school year will begin on Aug. 8, because that date, in addition to the rest of the calendar, is set as a result of previous negotiations district officials held with the Glendale teachers’ union.

School board member Greg Krikorian favored changing that date, despite it having already been locked in place.

“I fully agree that Aug. 8 is really an early start time, and I don’t see what the challenge for us five members [is]… We’re elected bodies, we could talk to the [Glendale teachers association] to say, ‘Hey, what’s the problem with just punting one week?’”

He recalled when school began one week later than planned in 2009 when the Station fire ravaged the mountains above La Crescenta.

However, Co-Interim Supt. Joel Shawn said that state officials permit calendar changes in the case of a fire or any other emergency. In this case, however, the calendar would need to be entirely renegotiated with the Glendale teachers’ union, Shawn added.

Fellow board members spoke in favor of sticking to the Aug. 8 start date for 2016-17 and deciding on a new calendar for the following school year.

“As an elected [official], I have a responsibility to the decisions I’ve made in the past,” said school board member Nayiri Nahabedian. “We don’t have a crisis in terms of the fire situation that we had a few years ago. This is the problem that I have — those five days, we’re going to have to make it up somewhere. That means adding a day where people currently believe is an off day and they have already made plans.”

Maria Gandera, assistant superintendent of Glendale Unified, said three community forums will be held, spread throughout November and December.

Then a committee of teachers, students, parents and staff members will meet six to eight times from January through March to discuss how to shape the calendar.

After hearing input, Gandera said a proposed calendar would be presented to the school board in early April, before it’s negotiated with the teachers’ union and hopefully adopted by the end of June.

Shawn reminded the school board that it may not be possible to please everyone.

“There are so many interests out there that it is a very, very difficult thing to come up with any one calendar that satisfies everybody’s interest in this,” he said. “I think it’s important to start with that perspective because no matter what you do, somebody’s not going to be happy with the end result.”

“That’s the nature of what we do when you’re serving a large, complex population, and I do think our process strives to get input from all of the interest groups and to integrate that into a proposal that makes sense and, at the core of it, keeps student learning at the foremost,” he added.

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Kelly Corrigan, kelly.corrigan@latimes.com

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan