HART MULLS GOING YEAR-ROUND; STATE GRANT SOUGHT TO HELP RELIEVE SCHOOL CROWDING.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

The Hart school district, which will have 15,000 students when classes resume this fall, may have to switch to a year-round schedule next year if other options to accommodate rapid growth fall through.

The board will discuss that potential scenario tonight, as members will be asked to authorize the district's application for a state grant pertaining to multi-track year-round education. The deadline for the district to apply for the grant from the state Department of Education is Aug. 3, and the payment rate would be $25 per student enrolled, according to Assistant Superintendent Leslie Crunelle.

To be eligible for the state grant, school districts must meet several criteria. For one, they must demonstrate that their campuses are overcrowded - with enrollments 5 percent over capacity, Crunelle said.

Although district administrators are mulling year-round education as a way to handle the space crunch at local high schools and junior highs, applying for the state grant is more of a strategic move than an endorsement of multi-track, she said.

``There has been no decision to implement multitrack year-round education in the district, (but) it is a serious option for addressing overcrowding - especially at the junior high level,'' Crunelle said in a report to the board.

The state will award the grants in December, and the funds must be spent on carrying out a year-round schedule within two years of receiving the funds, Crunelle added. Otherwise, districts have to repay the grants with interest.

Enrollments at Canyon, Hart, Saugus and Valencia high schools, along with Sierra Vista, Placerita, Arroyo Seco and La Mesa junior highs, have been spiraling upward every year.

Superintendent Bob Lee has forecast that the district will have 900 more students this September than the 14,100 it had in June. The reason is that each new batch of seventh-graders consistently has been larger than the outgoing group of 12th-graders.

``Every (senior) class that graduates is smaller than the incoming class,'' Crunelle explained.

The constant home construction activity across the Santa Clarita Valley adds to that, officials said.

To make room for the ever-increasing enrollment, some schools have added ``zero'' periods that offer early-morning classes. More than 150 portable classrooms have been installed districtwide, and there's even talk of erecting a temporary junior high while the permanent campus is being built on the adjacent land.

Junior highs cost about $24 million to build and the district's four campuses are now a combined 29 percent over their enrollment capacity.

Crunelle said that, if multitrack becomes necessary, the year-round calendar probably would not be used at the high schools.

Plans are being formulated for a new junior high near McBean Parkway and Newhall Ranch Road, and a new high school in the Stevenson Ranch area. The last time voters in the Hart district passed a school bond measure was in the 1970s, and the district has just $125,000 left to pay on that debt, said Bill Maddigan, the district's director of business and fiscal services.