Growing Enrollment : Year-Round Class Schedule Mulled for Hart District

School officials in the Santa Clarita Valley are considering placing more than 11,000 junior and senior high school students on a year-round class program as early as September, 1987.

Trustees of the William S. Hart High School District agreed Tuesday night to consider instituting a year-round school calendar to accommodate the region’s fast-growing student population.

Supt. Hamilton C. Smyth said enrollment in the district’s three high schools--Canyon, Hart and Saugus--already is above capacity, with almost 700 students attending classes in temporary facilities. By 1990, he said, the district will need classrooms for about 1,200 more students than the three campuses were designed to handle.

The district’s three junior high schools--Sierra Vista, Placerita and Arroyo Seco--are not crowded, Smyth said. But enrollment estimates based on the rapid rate of residential growth indicate that they will exceed capacity by 1990, he said.

New School Would Be Costly

Ideally, Smyth said, a new high school would be built to handle the increase in students. But that alternative is unlikely, he said, because construction costs would be $25 million to $30 million, requiring massive financial aid from the state.

Implementing a year-round school program is an alternative that trustees must examine closely, despite the expected opposition from parents, Smyth said.

“We cannot afford to wait for something magical to happen,” he said.

Smyth said district officials are doing all they can to slow construction of new housing in the area. Seven months ago, the board of education called for a moratorium on construction.

Smyth’s administrative assistant, Donald Jerry, gave the school board a 45-page report outlining nine potential year-round school calendars. He said such schedules can increase the district’s student capacity by as much as 50% with no new facilities.

Parent opposition, based on the disruption of vacation plans, can be overcome with a public information campaign beginning at least six months before any year-round program is instituted, Jerry said.

No vote was taken on the issue, but all the board members said they want to study the possibility of implementing a year-round program of some type.

“We really have an obligation to the people in the community to look at this carefully,” board President Clara Stroup said. She said trustees will discuss the concept with parent advisory groups at each school.

Smyth said that, by the next board meeting in two weeks, he will have an estimate of the cost of hiring a consultant to ease the district through the transition to a year-round program. He said such a program could be implemented by fall of 1987.

View of Principals

Principals of the three high schools agreed with the school board that a year-round program could solve the district’s crowding problem.

“It’s an option we absolutely must consider,” Saugus High Principal Michael von Buelow said.

He said he is concerned, however, about maintaining student unity, because on a year-round program “never at one time would you have all the students together.”

The student school board member, Marge Coyne, predicted a different basis for opposition to year-round schools.

“I don’t think students will go for it,” she said. “They want to go to the beach in the summer.”

But trustee Howard McKeon said, “I think it’s going to be a fact of life.”