DISTRICT, ITS PUPILS SOON TO MIX IT UP; 400 STUDENTS WILL CROSS BOUNDARIES.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

When school begins next month, nearly 400 students will be attending campuses outside the normal attendance boundaries, all part of the Hart district's annual shuffle called open enrollment.

The program is popular with parents, students and school board members, even though it creates some lopsidedness at high schools and junior highs, an enrollment unevenness that must be remedied with additional teachers and classrooms, district administrators said.

Regardless, the board of education for the William S. Hart Union High School District has a policy that such transfer requests be granted whenever possible. The number of outgoing students at a school doesn't have to match the number of incoming students for a transfer to be approved.

``The board strongly supports parental choice,'' said Superintendent Bob Lee.

In figures from the registration period in February, 262 high school students asked to change campuses and 120 junior high students wanted to switch. Schools that gained students in the shuffle were Hart High (38 additional), Arroyo Seco Junior High (21), Placerita Junior High (21) and Valencia High (12).

The other four schools will have a net loss in students after the dust settles. Canyon High will have 32 fewer students, Sierra Vista Junior High will lose 30, Saugus High will have 18 fewer and La Mesa Junior High will lose seven.

``The board said they wanted to try open enrollment without any restrictions on any school,'' Lee said. ``They said they wanted to see if we can do 100 percent parental choice.''

Over the summer, the figures have been in flux as students and parents change their minds and retract their transfer requests, officials at some schools said. School will begin Sept. 8.

And the trend seems to be that most of the transfers are among incoming seventh-graders at the junior highs and incoming ninth-graders at the high schools, Lee said.

Of all the Hart High students transferring to other schools, only four had previously attended the Newhall campus, said school Registrar Sam Browning. The rest of the outgoing transfers were students who had just moved to the area, students who had been attending private schools, and those who had just completed eighth grade, she said.

Hart High is expecting more than 2,315 students in the fall - up from 2,160 when school ended in June - but students who sought transfers weren't turned away, Browning said.

``Anyone who applied for open enrollment was able to get it,'' she said. ``(The district) didn't put any population caps on the schools. They just put more portable (classrooms) on the grounds and hired more teachers.''

People gave a variety of reasons in their requests for open-enrollment transfers, said Mike Allmandinger, administrator of student services for the Hart district.

Most said they wanted a school closer to home. Others wanted to attend the same school as a sibling, and some cited transportation convenience.

Tying for fourth place on the list were those who thought their school of choice would provide a better education and those who wanted to attend the same school as their friends. Others said they had moved out of one school's neighborhood but they still wanted to attend there, and some said they preferred a class or program that one school offered.

Only a handful of open enrollment requests cited a school's athletic programs as the reason for wanting the transfer, Allmandinger said.