Inglewood School Board Rejects Year-Round Plan : Education: The 3-2 vote reflects intensive lobbying by parents from more affluent neighborhoods, where overcrowding is not as severe.

For the third time in a year, the Inglewood School Board has bowed to angry parents and rejected a plan to ease overcrowding with a districtwide, year-round schedule for all elementary grades.

The 3-2 vote Wednesday night was the result of intensive lobbying by parents from more affluent areas of the city, where overcrowding is not as severe as in the city’s central area.

In central Inglewood, an influx of immigrants and a boom in apartment construction over the past decade have swelled enrollments. Several schools in the area run on year-round schedules and will continue to do so, despite the vote Wednesday night.

School administrators estimate that districtwide, enrollment will reach 20,000 by the 1996-97 school year, up from about 16,400 students in the schools today.

Board President Thomasina Reed, who along with Trustee Larry Aubry voted for a year-round schedule, said Thursday that she does not know what the district can do now to ease overcrowding. Some parents may be delighted by the vote, she said, but the problem remains.

“The overcrowding doesn’t go away,” Reed said, adding that, even if there were money at the local or state level for school construction, it takes six years to get a school built.

Parents who objected to year-round schooling complained that the proposed academic schedule, split into three segments separated by monthlong vacation breaks, would disrupt the learning patterns of students. They also asserted that it would destroy the sense of community in their neighborhoods, because some children would be in school while others were on vacation.

What is more, they said, it would interrupt such extracurricular activities as summer camp, sports and Boy Scout and Girl Scout schedules.

The board was clear Wednesday in rejecting a districtwide, year-round schedule, but on a related issue concerning the district’s new middle schools, confusion reigned.

The district administration considers middle schools a means of easing overcrowding and improving the curriculum for students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. But the board’s rejection Wednesday of the year-round plan effectively scrapped a district plan detailing which elementary schools would send sixth-graders to which middle schools. The confusion arises because the district is now left with elementary schools on both year-round and traditional schedules, while middle schools remain on traditional schedules.