McKenna Teaches Parents About Year-Round School

George McKenna, superintendent of schools in Inglewood, has returned to his teaching days. With scores of parents as his students, McKenna delivered a string of lessons in the last two weeks on year-round schools and how the concept might just be the answer to the district’s congested elementary schools.

With schools across the Inglewood Unified School District reaching or exceeding capacities, administrators are hoping that the community will overcome its resistance to changing the school calendar and support the year-round scheduling that is spreading slowly throughout California and 19 other states.

Students spend the same number of days in class under a year-round schedule, McKenna told parents in a string of community meetings that began last Thursday, but instead of a summer vacation they get shorter breaks throughout the year. The schedule allows a school to be in continuous operation and to get 25% more use out of classrooms that would be idle in the summer.

Since 1986, Inglewood has put Kelso, Woodworth and Highland elementary schools on year-round programs. When administrators in past years have mentioned converting Centinela, Hudnall, Payne and Oak Street elementary schools to year-round schedules, parents opposed the concept.

To overcome such opposition, district officials created a series of community workshops that will continue through the beginning of December to highlight the benefits of year-round schools.

The district’s goal is to convert those four elementary schools to year-round use. There are no plans for such a schedule at the district’s other seven elementary schools, two junior high schools or two high schools, which have less severe overcrowding.

The district’s problem is growing enrollment, which is not expected to slow down, officials say. Enrollment is 16,000, about 1,000 students greater than three years ago. Dozens of portable classrooms are in use on campuses.

At the workshop Tuesday night at Oak Street school, one parent said: “McKenna explained year-round schools to us like we were little kids.”

“He was making notes on a chalkboard. That’s just what he had to do,” said Carlos Jaen, who added that year-round schooling is a misunderstood concept to most parents, especially to the many Latino parents such as himself in Inglewood’s crowded central corridor. He said some parents believe that their children will be in school without a vacation for 12 months, or that the family will never be together on vacations.

But even such chalkboard sessions may not be enough to sway critics, including the Inglewood PTA-Council. Opponents range from parents concerned about vacation scheduling to those uneasy about departing from a system that has been in use for so long.

In Los Angeles, where about 100 of the 646 schools run all year, the school board scuttled a districtwide year-round plan last year after heated internal debate and public outcry.

Controversy typically surrounds any change from the long-ingrained September-through-June school year, said Charles Ballinger, executive director of the San Diego-based National Assn. for Year-Round Education. But year-round schools are gaining in popularity, he said, and involves 475,000 students in 638 campuses across the country.

They are becoming increasingly common in California, where state money is tight for new school buildings and where state officials expect an additional 160,000 to 200,000 students each year for the next five years, state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Thursday.

Advocates of year-round schools maintain that the traditional schedule is antiquated.

“It dates back to the 19th Century when the kids were needed in the summer to do the weeding or drive the mules on the family farm,” said William L. Rukeyser, a spokesman for Honig. “How many kids in the L.A. Basin weed or drive mules during their summer months today?”

Rukeyser said that districts “inevitably run up against a brick wall of people who don’t understand year-round schools or understand it but don’t like it. There is a built-in conservative tendency to say: ‘I didn’t do it that way when I went to school and therefore I don’t support it.’ ”

The state Department of Education encourages districts to adopt year-round schools with $25-per-student incentives.

“Right now we’re not trying to force this down anyone’s throat,” Rukeyser said. “But it doesn’t take a lot of brains to see that a school leaving classrooms vacant for three months a year may be an unacceptable luxury.”

Year-round advocates also mention the educational advantages of shorter vacation breaks. The traditional schedule may be detrimental to students who come from a Spanish-speaking home where they may be away from the English language for three months, Ballinger said.

Despite the advocacy for year-round schools by top state and local officials, resistance to the idea remains in Inglewood.

Norma Smith, president of the Inglewood PTA-Council, says most of the parents in her group oppose the change and think the district should find other ways to relieve overcrowded schools.

“They can talk until they’re blue in the face but most of the community is still going to be against year-round schools,” Smith said.

The biggest criticism is the disruptive effect year-round schools have on the traditional summer vacation, but Smith wonders how truancy officers will ever know if a student on the street is supposed to be in school or not, when students are rotating all year long.

District officials respond that year-round scheduling actually offers families more vacation possibilities and that few families can afford to take off for an entire summer anyway. Siblings would be given the same schedule, and the same vacations. Absentee problems will be addressed at the school site, they say.

Hector Gutierrez, a parent who attended a community meeting Wednesday night, still considers year-round schooling an experimental concept and he’s reluctant to use his children as guinea pigs.

“Just put them in for nine months and teach them,” he said.

But Board Member Zyra McCloud said that the meetings have convinced her that as the community learns about year-round schooling and understands how it will improve the environment for their children, they will support it.

“The district planned (in past years) to go year-round but the uproar . . . from the parents prevented us,” McCloud said. “ . . . They’re now changing their minds and considering this because they know how crowded their children are.”