Busing Plan Would Add 10 Schools in Valley to List

Los Angeles Unified School District planners have proposed that 10 more San Fernando Valley schools take in students bused from inner-city schools to relieve crowding.

About 35 Valley schools already are receiving about 2,000 students under the Capacity Adjustment Program, or CAP, as the crowding relief effort is called.

Under the proposal for the coming school year, an estimated 30 students from East and Southeast Los Angeles would be bused to each of the newly designated Valley schools--nine elementary schools and one junior high school.

District officials said they have not determined how many more students will be bused to the Valley because they cannot predict the exact extent of overcrowding until the start of the school year.

Attached to Budget

The proposal was attached last week to the district’s 1985-1986 budget, which the board is expected to vote on in the next few weeks.

School Board Member Roberta Weintraub, who represents the East Valley, noted that the district’s schools are “real overcrowded now.”

“We don’t have a choice about how we house kids anymore,” she said. “It would be nice to house them all in their neighborhood schools, but we can’t.”

The 10 Valley schools that would be affected by the budget proposal are not filled to capacity and have relatively low minority populations, said David Armor, who represents the West Valley on the school board.

Last year, the program bused 6,000 students from 43 “sender” schools to 95 “receiver” schools, said Santiago Jackson, an assistant superintendent of schools.

Increase of 900 Seen

He said the number of students was expected to increase by 900 this fall. Besides the estimated 300 children going to the newly designated Valley schools, about 600 of the added transfer students are expected to go to schools elsewhere or to Valley schools already in the program.

The proposal also calls for three other new “receiver schools” outside the Valley.

Jackson said 20 teachers would be hired to help new CAP receiver schools cope with the additional enrollment, at a cost of $508,220 for the next school year. He called it the single biggest increase in the program since it began in 1981.

“It’s a contingency plan,” he said. “We’re putting greater emphasis on being prepared.”

Students transfers in the CAP program are mandatory, unlike the voluntary Permit With Transportation, or PWT program, in which the city buses students to achieve racial integration.

Although integration is a byproduct of CAP and district officials consider racial balance when determining how to distribute students, the program is aimed at the crowding problem in inner-city areas. A 1976 California Supreme Court order that set standards for school desegregation in Los Angeles also put limits on class sizes.

The court order said that classrooms in schools with predominantly minority student bodies are classed as crowded when they have a student-teacher ratio higher than 27 to 1. The allowable limit for predominantly Anglo schools is 31 to 1. A stricter limitation was imposed on the inner-city schools to compensate for educational disadvantages that students in racially isolated schools had suffered over the years of segregation, Jackson said.

Unhappiness Among Students

Armor said CAP students often are unhappy about being bused from their neighborhoods. He said, for example, that some require bilingual services that the suburban schools often do not offer.

After one year of being bused, Jackson said, CAP students are given a choice between returning to their neighborhood school or continuing to be bused. He said only about half the students continue to commute.

The schools from which students would be sent to the Valley have not been identified, Jackson said.

The 10 new Valley “receiver” schools, their locations and enrollment levels last year are:

--Anatola Avenue School, Van Nuys, 264

--Andasol Avenue School, Northridge, 365

--Calvert Street School, Woodland Hills, 276

--Lemay Street School, Van Nuys, 347

--Mayall Street School, Sepulveda, 495

--Melvin Avenue School, Reseda, 348

--Nobel Junior High School, Northridge, 1,151

--Shirley Avenue School, Reseda, 454

--Vanalden Avenue School, Reseda, 339

--Woodland Hills School, Woodland Hills, 248.