All 842 Schools in L.A. District to Go Year-Round

Making good on a commitment it made more than a year ago, the Los Angeles Board of Education on Monday adopted a schedule that will put all 842 of the district’s campuses into some form of year-round operation by this summer.

The 5-2 vote, along with the public testimony and sharp debate that preceded it, showed some of the same controversy that has dogged the board since it first began talking about moving to districtwide year-round operation almost six years ago.

It will cost about $4.2 million to implement the system, including $1.2 million to conduct winter sports programs during a time when most students and coaches will be on break.

But board member Roberta Weintraub said the change is worth it, despite the district’s budget problems, because it will lead to a “better educational system in the long run.”

By its vote, with members Julie Korenstein and Mark Slavkin dissenting, the board reaffirmed the action it took in February, 1990, when it decided on year-round operation as an equitable means of relieving overcrowding. The district grew by about 15,000 students this school year.

Yet most schools will operate, for a while at least, on a single track, with all of their students on campus at one time. Single-track schedules do not increase a school’s capacity.

Under the newly approved calendar, school will begin for most students on Aug. 19, with an eight-week winter recess running from Dec. 23 through Feb. 13, 1992. The spring semester will run from Feb. 14 through June 30.

The arrangement spells the end of the traditional school year with its single long vacation in the summer. Gone also is summer school, to be replaced with a six-week “intersession” during the winter break.

That is the schedule for all but 202 elementary, secondary and adult schools, and it will affect about 70% of the more than 800,000 students in the nation’s second-largest school district.

The rest of the schools also will be operating year-round but on so-called multitrack scheduling in which students are divided into three or four groups, with one group on vacation at any given time.

Students in 162 schools will be on a four-track system, with Track A following the schedule used at single-track schools.

About 40 schools, near downtown and in some cities southeast of Los Angeles, will remain for the time being on a three-track system known as Concept 6. District officials hope eventually to bring the calendars at these schools into conformity with those of the rest of the district.

Multitrack schools can accommodate up to 33% more students, depending on the number of tracks. As schools have become increasingly overcrowded, more and more have been put into multitrack year-round operation, many in older areas with large numbers of recent immigrants.

Many of the still-unresolved issues arise from the fact that most high school students will be on vacation during some key periods, including the time for applying to college and seeking financial aid. It also poses problems for students taking advanced placement exams for college credits.

Adult school teachers said the new schedule will frustrate their students, who now attend on a continuous “tri-semester” schedule, and they predicted that many will drop out.

Slavkin said his vote in opposition was prompted by enormous frustration that many issues still had not been resolved.

But Supt. Bill Anton defended his staff’s work, saying officials had responded to all issues as they were raised.

Opponents of year-round schools, including many parents in relatively uncrowded parts of the district such as the Westside and the West San Fernando Valley, argue that it is senseless to disrupt summer programs and child-care arrangements and to make students swelter in classrooms that are not air-conditioned when their schools are not crowded.

Advocates of the new schedule say it is fairer and more practical, especially for families with children at more than one school, than having schools in the same district following several different schedules, as they do now.