SANTA ANA : 2 Middle Schools May Go Year-Round

With student enrollment continuing to grow at a record pace, the Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Education this week announced its intention to put Lathrop and Sierra intermediate schools on a year-round schedule because of overcrowding.

The district, which has an enrollment of 47,800 students, has already placed 19 of its 27 elementary schools on a year-round calendar but had resisted switching intermediate schools from a traditional nine-month schedule.

“The problem is, those kids at the elementary schools are growing up,” said Joseph Tafoya, assistant superintendent of the secondary division.

Lathrop, which was built to house 1,470 students, currently has 1,525 students. The district has been forced to bus 269 students who should be attending Lathrop to Carr, McFadden or Spurgeon intermediate schools.

If Lathrop were to be converted to a year-round schedule, it would be able to serve 1,793 students and the district would probably be able to eliminate the busing to the other schools, Tafoya said.

Sierra has a student population of 1,090 students, and district officials expect that number to leap to more than 1,500 students within four years. The school currently has 20 portable classrooms on its campus and has no room for more, Tafoya said.

The district will hold a public hearing Nov. 26, and trustees are expected to make a final decision on Jan. 14.

If approved, students would attend school for 60-day periods with 20-day vacation periods in between. The new schedule would begin at the start of the 1992-93 school year.

More intermediate schools may go year-round in future years, officials said.