DISTRICT TO CONFORM SCHEDULES.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

PEARBLOSSOM - All six schools in the Keppel Union School District will be on single-track, year-round schedules starting next school year.

Officials say the change will give teachers better opportunities to work with students who are falling behind and bring some uniformity to the district, which now uses three different schedules.

``We really believe it's an academically focused calendar that can really be a tool for us to strengthen student achievement because of the way the breaks are structured,'' Superintendent Joe Cox said. ``We also can have strategically placed intercessions during the year, as opposed to summer school, that give us some opportunities to really work with our at-risk students.''

Currently, three schools are on multi-track year-round schedules. Daisy Gibson and Alpine schools have four tracks and Almondale Middle School has five tracks. Antelope and Pearblossom schools are on a traditional schedule, and Lake Los Angeles School is on a single-track calendar, Cox said.

The board voted unanimously at a special meeting Monday to adopt the new calendar and phase it in over two years. There were about 45 people attending the meeting, and those who spoke up on the proposal were evenly divided for and against the change, Cox said.

Lake Los Angeles will start next school year on the single-track calendar, which starts Aug. 7, has a four-week winter break and a three-week spring break, and ends in mid-June, Cox said.

For the five schools that are not on a single-track schedule this year, the district will use an interim single-track schedule for the year 2000-01 that will accommodate families and students who have already made vacation or other plans based on their current school calendar.

That interim schedule will begin three weeks later, shorten the December break from four to three weeks and the spring break from three weeks to two, and end a week later in June, Cox said.

By 2001-02, all schools will be on the same single-track calendar as Lake Los Angeles School.

The decision to change the schedule came after the district held 30 meetings over the past two months to gather input from parents and staff, Cox said.

Three of the district's schools went to a multi-track schedule in 1992 because of overcrowding or projections of student growth, Cox said. But now the district is seeing a steady decline in enrollment, dropping from a peak of 3,200 in the early 1990s to the current student population of 2,800, Cox said.

Cox attributed the decrease to a lower enrollment of kindergartners enrolling and a decline in housing construction.