CALENDAR SHIFT AT GLENDALE SCHOOLS? TRADITIONAL SCHEDULE COULD RETURN.

Byline: EUGENE TONG Staff Writer

GLENDALE -- Less than a week after the school year ended, Columbus Elementary buzzed Wednesday as teachers hung maps and moved furniture for another crush of pupils starting a new school year today.

``We flip the school in a week,'' Principal Kelly King said. ``We have it down to an art form. ... From Friday, we have been changing all the students' room assignments. Teachers who are teaching a different grade have to find new rooms.''

But it's a dance that likely will end soon as declining enrollment at the Glendale Unified School District in recent years allow once-crowded campuses to abandon year-round schedules for a traditional calendar with a 2 1/2-month summer break.

``This should be our last year,'' said King, who expects 730 pupils for the 2006-07 school year.

Only four elementary campuses -- Columbus, Keppel, Mann and White -- remain on the three-months-on, one-month-off system that leaves a quarter of the pupils on break throughout the year. It was installed districtwide 15 years ago as an answer to classroom shortage.

But district enrollment has declined since peaking with about 30,400 in 2000. Projected enrollment for 2006-07 is about 27,200, of which 12,500 are in grades kindergarten through sixth.

The decline -- attributed to lower birth rates and high housing costs, which keeps young families from moving into the city -- tends to continue once it sets in, said Stephen Hodgson, the district's chief business and financial officer.

Enrollment is projected to be as low as 25,400 by 2009-10. Still, officials have not yet committed to taking the last four schools off year-round.

``Before we move somebody off, we have to have a cushion because we don't want to move schools off one year, then for whatever reason move them back on the next year,'' he said. ``Certainly by the winter break, if we're going to move anybody else off, we need to notify lots of people. But we haven't done that.''

Bringing back the traditional calendar means some savings for a school district standing to lose about $3.3 million in state funding this year from a loss of 600 students. Hodgson said the district can shave about 15 days' pay from principals and clerical staff under the shorter traditional calendar, but it's not as much as staff reduction.

``Say that we can reduce $1.5 million worth of teachers (through attrition),'' he said. ``The other $1.5 million we'll have to reduce other things. That's what becomes the challenge to the superintendent and the board.''

Parents and teachers are split on the issue. A January survey of 2,500 GUSD parents found 87 percent prefer the traditional calendar. But a Glendale Teachers Association survey in October of 700 teachers said 87 percent wanted year-round to stay.

For King, a year-round calendar provides more opportunities to identify and help troubled students, while the teaching staff can schedule time off throughout the year. The school also runs a student tutor program, where vacationing pupils return to help their peers.

``We'll have to get more parent volunteers,'' she said.

Parents tend to prefer a long summer break, especially if their elementary school-age children have older siblings in middle school and high school, King said.

Asked about the calendar debate's effect on her pupils, King said: ``I don't think it's real to them. It's the adult factor. Children are much more flexible than the adults.''

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com

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