ALL-YEAR SCHOOL CALENDAR ADOPTED; NEWHALL STUDENTS TO START CLASS IN SUMMER SCHOOL YEAR WILL START IN JULY.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

In July, as the community celebrates Independence Day with parades, fireworks and backyard barbecues, thousands of local children will have three words - back to school - on their minds.

The Newhall School District will switch to a year-round calendar this summer, meaning 75 percent of its students will return to the classroom July 6. The other 25 percent will head back Aug. 3, triggering a monthlong vacation for one-third of those who started earlier.

The district will be starting a continuing cycle with three-fourths of students in session and one-fourth on break.

Last week, the Newhall school board approved the plan submitted by a committee whose members had been appointed to devise a method for multitrack, year-round education at the district's seven elementary schools.

Parents can choose from four tracks - labeled red, green, blue and yellow - with individual schedules for school and vacation. Students in three of those tracks - about 4,385 kids in all - will start school in July, while about 1,460 kids will be on vacation until August.

Overcrowding from steady enrollment growth led to the change from the traditional school schedule starting after Labor Day. But this isn't the Newhall district's first go-round with year-round education.

Change to last years

The district last tried the year-round approach from 1993-95, but only at two of its schools and only until construction was complete on Stevenson Ranch Elementary. That school, the district's seventh, now has more than 1,000 students and has become the largest in the system.

There won't be an eighth school built anytime soon, so the school board and Superintendent Marc Winger said they had little choice but to keep district classrooms in use all 12 months of the year. Not only is year-round education coming, but it's going to stay around for a while.

``I've said to parents that we're on it for the foreseeable future,'' Winger said. ``We will try to pass a bond (to pay for new schools), and we have developer agreements in place,'' he added.

Money for new school construction is hard to come by - even in a growing region like the Santa Clarita Valley.

With relatively few construction grants from the state, school districts are limited to collecting fees from developers of new housing tracts and asking local voters to tax themselves to raise money through a bond issue when more classrooms are needed. The only alternative to getting enough new classrooms is using buildings 12 months out of the year, rather than 10, officials said.

Winger predicted the district would be on the multitrack calendar three to five years before construction funds become available.

Children are flexible

But the superintendent points to Pinetree Elementary, in the neighboring Sulphur Springs School District, as evidence that even die-hard opponents of the year-round system can come to love it.

``Pinetree has been on it for eight years,'' Winger said.

``And now they don't want to go back to the traditional (calendar),'' added Jan Uberstine, who served as co-chairwoman of the Newhall district's multitrack committee. ``Most children are really much more flexible than the parents think they are.''

Parents voiced concerns and made suggestions during public meetings at each district school. The districtwide committee - a handful of parents, faculty and principals from each school - incorporated many of the public's into the recommendations to the school board, said Uberstine, whose children attend Newhall Elementary.

A key issue was how parents would apply for the track of their choice. The committee considered a lottery to determine who would be at the front of the line to choose, but instead opted for the first-come, first-served approach. Applications will be accepted starting at 3 p.m. Jan. 31.

Because registration will be held on a Saturday afternoon, Winger said he hopes parents will not camp overnight, as many did a few years ago when Valencia Valley and Wiley Canyon schools converted to the multitrack schedule.

``Reasonable people might get there in the morning and stand in line all day,'' Winger said. ``If they think it's that important, they're going to get in the front of the line.''

Trial run smooth

Principal Wayne Abruzzo said the year-round system functioned quite smoothly last time around at Valencia Valley Elementary School, where there are now 845 students and 33 teachers.

``Teachers absolutely loved it,'' he said. Teachers who favor year-round education say students can move ahead with less time spent on review when vacations are briefer. They say children tend to forget more in a three-month summer vacation than in one-month breaks scattered throughout the year.

``I have not talked to anyone who has been strongly opposed'' to the pending switch to multitrack, ``and I think that's a good sign,'' Abruzzo added.

Valencia Valley parents have wanted to know if their children will be assigned the same track they had the last time. ``No they won't,'' Abruzzo said. ``They'll have to wait in line again.''

Uberstine said parents also are concerned about the need for 25 percent of the teachers and students at every school to rotate from classroom to classroom every month as one group goes on vacation and another returns.

``Some parents thought it would be traumatic or difficult to have their kids rotate,'' she said, but she called it a logistical necessity for sharing classrooms. Rather than make everyone move every month, the system can function if one-fourth of the kids and faculty rove, Uberstine said.

The multitrack committee also made provisions for preserving the programs for bilingual education and for gifted and talented students.

At Newhall Elementary, bilingual education will be offered in three of the four tracks. Teachers with bilingual credentials will be assigned to two tracks at each of two schools, Wiley Canyon and Peachland, Uberstine said. Students speaking English as their primary or only language, however, ``are not excluded from any of the tracks,'' she added.

All 500 students at Old Orchard Elementary, meanwhile, will be assigned to a single track - the one labeled green - because there are too few students at that school, the district's smallest, to warrant a multitrack calendar, Winger said.

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BOX: Tentative schedule for the 1998-1999 school year