Packed Schools in Inglewood May Spur Shift in Boundaries

As some of Inglewood’s traditionally crowded schools approached their enrollment limits last week, district officials said they may have to shift boundary lines to transfer students to schools outside the current attendance areas.

Districtwide attendance on the first day of classes Tuesday was about 13,600, but that rose to 14,200 the second day and is expected in the coming weeks to rise beyond the record 15,000 enrollment of last year, school officials said.

“The majority of our schools at the elementary level (which includes junior high schools) are reaching capacity or at capacity,” district spokesman Maurice Wiley said. “The secondary schools are better off. The critical area is at elementary level.”

100 More Than Predicted

One of the hardest hit campuses was George Crozier Junior High School on Grevillea Avenue northwest of City Hall, which received about 100 more students than the 1,000 that Principal James Crow had predicted in May.

“All classes are impacted,” Crow said. “I’m running as many as 40 students in some academic classes.” He said the problem at Crozier is not a new one. “This is the 10th year that I’ve fought this problem.”

Crozier, originally designed for about 850 students, accommodated about 1,000 students last year using numerous portable classrooms at the campus. This fall’s enrollment grew to about 1,100, Crow said, and no more trailer space remains.

To handle the large enrollment at Crozier, Crow said he divided students among various classrooms last week and will add two more teachers to conduct classes in rooms that are vacant various periods of the day.

However, Crow said a longer term solution would be to move school boundaries so some of Crozier’s students would attend Albert Monroe Junior High School, which district officials said had not yet reached its enrollment limits.

Along with Crozier, Oak Street Elementary School (with about 890 students) and Claude Hudnall Elementary School (with about 480 students) were near capacity, Supt. George McKenna said.

“We knew which schools were going to fill up quickly,” McKenna said. “We were right.”

McKenna, superintendent since last October, said he will request at the Sept. 27 school board meeting that some students be transferred to less crowded classrooms and that boundaries be changed to shift attendance from the congested campuses.

Year-Round Schedules

But he said school officials are also looking into the possibility of implementing year-round schedules at more schools next academic year, even though such measures have generated strong parental opposition in the past. Among the schools being considered are Centinela, Hudnall, Buelah Payne and Oak Street elementary schools.

After the first week, La Tijera and Payne elementary schools were below the enrollment levels they had in June but approaching their capacities, officials said. Frank D. Parent Elementary School was at capacity, and the enrollments at Morningside and Inglewood high schools were slightly lower than last year, district officials said.

District officials attribute the overcrowding problem to the lack of state money to build school facilities and the many young families moving into Inglewood’s growing multifamily developments.

The district requested earlier this month that the state reassess Inglewood’s need for a new elementary school, but state education officials say construction funds are limited because the state faces its biggest enrollment growth since the 1940s. The City Council, acknowledging a congestion problem in many areas of Inglewood, imposed a 45-day moratorium on most multiunit developments at the end of August.

Strain from rising enrollments is not new to Inglewood’s two high schools, two junior high schools and 13 elementary schools.

In 1985, the district opened an emergency school at a local church hall for 106 kindergarten and first-grade students. The next year, William H. Kelso Elementary School adopted a year-round schedule to maximize the use of its classrooms, with Clyde Woodworth and Highland elementary schools following soon afterward. School officials have also converted rooms such as libraries into makeshift classrooms and placed dozens of portable classrooms on school playgrounds to absorb the steady increase in enrollment.

In anticipation of the increase in enrollment this year, the district brought several portable classrooms with enough space for a total of 180 additional students onto several campuses during the summer.

Wanda Armstrong, a mathematics teacher at Crozier, said last week that she had more than 40 students in three of her classes and folding chairs in the aisles to accommodate the extras.

“We have maxed out,” she said. “It’s very difficult to teach. Kids have to write on their laps or share a desktop. And junior high students don’t share well. They need their space.”

Armstrong said four of her five general math classes this year exceed the maximum class size of 34.

“It’s amazing what eight to nine (extra) bodies can do to you,” she said.