4 Capistrano Schools May Turn Back Calendar

Bucking an educational trend, officials in the Capistrano Unified School District are considering a cost-saving plan that would switch some year-round schools back to a more traditional calendar.

That would make the district a rarity in California, where the proportion of students enrolled in year-round schools more than doubled in the last decade.

And while parents at other districts cry out against switching to year-round schedules, many parents at the four year-round schools in South County aren’t celebrating the possible return of languid summer vacations--far from it. Instead, they’re beseeching trustees to forgo an estimated $400,000 in annual savings to save their cherished year-round calendars.

Trustees looked at the changes last week as part of a cost-cutting package that would save $700,000 in the next school year. However, parents expressed concerns that prompted them to hold off until March 13 on calendar changes that could affect 2,640 students at Harold Ambuehl and San Juan Capistrano elementary schools in San Juan Capistrano, Las Palmas in San Clemente and Foxborough in Aliso Viejo.

Year-round schools can force siblings and parents onto different vacation schedules, but the Capistrano parents believe having shorter vacations, staggered throughout the year, helps their children academically. However, district officials see no gain in overall student performance as a result of the year-round calendar.

Nancy McDaniel and Lucia Ann Ismael Zavalza are among those parents who oppose a change back to a traditional calendar.

“My kid is an average learner,” said Ambuehl parent McDaniel. “He would be in trouble in September without year-round help.”

Ambuehl’s year-round calendar is the district’s oldest, dating to 1979; the others are converts from the 1990s.

Continuous reinforcement is important for students in the language-immersion program at Las Palmas, where all subjects are taught in both Spanish and English, contends Ismael Zavalza.

“They learn more than at other kinds of schools,” she said. “A three-month [summer] vacation, I think, is too much.”

The statewide trend toward year-round schools has been driven by surging enrollment, the move to whittle class sizes in primary grades and state funding incentives. A decade ago, 8% of California’s students attended year-round schools; now, the figure is 22%.

In Orange County, 46 schools operated on a year-round calendar in 1993. Last year, of Orange County’s 551 public schools, 85 operated year-round in the Anaheim City, Capistrano, Cypress, Irvine, Magnolia, Orange and Santa Ana school districts.

If Capistrano were to revert to a September-to-June calendar at the four campuses, it would be a novel move, said Tom Payne, a consultant on year-round schools for the California Department of Education--especially because three of the schools are on a single track.

Most of California’s almost 1,500 year-round schools are multitrack--where schools squeeze in more students by staggering the start dates and vacation times for different batches of students. Often, if a district creates more classroom space, it will drop the year-round schedule, Payne said.

Less common are year-round schools on a single track, such as the Capistrano schools.

Those schools place all students and teachers on the same calendar, but they disperse vacation times so that summer vacation is not a vast stretch of time where students might backslide academically.

However, Capistrano’s year-round schools are more expensive than traditional schools, administrators say, because of the costs for chartering buses, hiring more teachers and running air-conditioning during the summer heat.

So far, the higher costs haven’t been matched by improved test scores or higher attendance rates, said Deputy Supt. Margaret LaRoe, who heads the district’s planning and accountability programs.

“We support choice and wish we could offer more,” LaRoe said. “But because this alternative has not been shown to drive an improvement in student achievement . . . we just can’t justify increased expenditures on the basis of kids learning.”

Some parents say that, in addition to academic advantages, a longer December break offers Latino students the chance for a traditional visit to relatives in Latin America.

Students at those schools receive the month of December off, while the traditional Capistrano Unified calendar grants a vacation from Dec. 20 to Jan. 2.

“We use December to go to Mexico to teach the kids about their roots,” said Las Palmas parent Evelyn Hernandez.

However, many of those students are late in returning.

“Students at year-round schools are absent at a greater level than at other schools,” Supt. James A. Fleming said.