Booked Solid : Schools: As enrollments swell and education dollars shrink, students struggle in cramped, chaotic classrooms. Studies link larger class sizes to lower achievement.

By DIANE SEO

Sept. 27, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Marlene Cunanan used to consider school a haven--a place where she could absorb herself in her studies and escape the hurried pace of the outside world.

But after her first two months at Belmont High School, the 14-year-old honor student has realized that school is nothing more than an extension of the crowded and often-chaotic Downtown neighborhood she has grown up in.

At Belmont High School, where there are more than 4,400 students, stairways are so jammed it often takes the 90-pound freshman five minutes to elbow her way down one flight. She lugs around an armful of books out of fear they will be stolen by her locker mate, whom she doesn’t know.

And each day, as she sits sandwiched in class after class, she feels her passion for school dwindle.

“It’s hard because you can’t really learn that much,” said Cunanan, who hopes her parents sell their home so she can attend another school. “All the teachers can do is give you your work and then you have to do it yourself. It’s not an easy environment.”

Overcrowding stems from two primary factors: a seemingly endless influx of new students, and the district’s ever-shrinking budget, which doesn’t allow for new schools or more teachers. The result is schools where class sizes average close to 40, where cafeteria lines can wind across campuses, and where students in some classes are propped up against walls or sit on dusty floors because there are not enough desks.

Research shows that larger class sizes lead to lower academic achievement, but the most telling picture of how overcrowding has affected the Los Angeles Unified School District comes from students themselves.

Oscar Oliva, 17, wakes up every weekday at 5 to catch a bus from his neighborhood near overcrowded Bell High School to Verdugo Hills High in Tujunga. Oliva said he spends more than two hours on the bus each day.

During recess at Miles Avenue Elementary in Huntington Park, fifth-grader Cheryl Aquino can’t run freely or play with friends on other areas of the blacktop because, like many schools, hers restricts children to designated “play zones.” School officials say the policy prevents children from getting injured.

And Martin Fuentes, a senior and honor student at Bell High, was shut out of two college-preparatory courses, which he fears will cost him his dream of attending Georgetown University next fall.

“Our kids are in survival mode,” said Ed Zschoche, an eighth-grade teacher at Gage Junior High School in Huntington Park. “They’re in survival mode when they go home because they live in a small apartment with five brothers and sisters. Then, they come to school and are in survival mode because we cram them in a classroom.”

Students throughout the district are forced to contend with crowded classrooms because officials will assign to each campus only enough teachers to meet the district’s average class-size standards.

However, most schools in Huntington Park, Bell, South Gate, the Eastside, the east San Fernando Valley and the area just west of Downtown have an added problem: They are simply at capacity.

“If children are jammed onto a campus where they have no sense of school and they can’t get to know their teacher, it affects them,” said Joyce Peyton, director of the district’s school utilization office and Capacity Adjustment Program. “Compare it to if you were to go Christmas shopping. The crowds and long lines affect how you act or feel. If you go shopping when you can get help from a salesperson or move around, you’ll have a different experience.”

Most crowded schools have adopted multitrack, year-round calendars, which allow them to increase their classroom space 23% to 38% by having three or four groups of students attend school at different times so that one group is always on vacation. Even so, 82% of the students being bused to other schools because of crowding are from multitrack schools, Peyton said.

A problem plaguing many students at multitrack high schools such as Bell and Huntington Park is that they can’t take the courses they need to be admitted to a four-year university. Fuentes, the Bell High honor student, had planned to take trigonometry and advanced composition this year to improve his chances of being admitted to Georgetown.

However, the 18-year-old was shut out of both courses and now takes regular English, typing and a class called service, which amounts to running errands for the teacher.

“I really want to go to Georgetown, but because I’m lacking math and science, I’m not sure they’ll understand,” Fuentes said. “My counselor said I should write on the application what happened to me . . . but I may go to a community college so that I can take these other courses.”

Fuentes’ plight is all-too familiar, counselors say: Too many students are competing for the same courses and schools can’t afford to spare a teacher or a classroom for a new geometry section that may attract only 20 to 25 students.

Class sizes throughout the district increased an average of 2.5 students during the 1991-92 school year. The average at the high school level is now 38.5, and the average elementary and junior high class ranges from 29.5 to 39 students. A court order requires the district to keep smaller class sizes at schools with 70% or more ethnic minorities, but classes for juniors and seniors at predominantly minority high schools are not part of this plan.

Class sizes are going up because the district has been gaining students and cutting teachers. Last year, the district cut about 1,700 classroom teaching positions and gained about 15,000 students, boosting total enrollment to about 640,000. More teaching positions are likely to be eliminated this year as the district looks to trim $400 million from its budget.

How class size affects learning is a topic of debate among education experts. A four-year study conducted by the Tennessee Department of Education and four universities showed classes of 13 to 17 kindergarten through third-grade students routinely outperform students in larger classes.

In another study, Prof. Glen Glass of Arizona State University concluded that academic achievement is proportionate to the percentage change in class size. “So, if you have 40 students and you increase the class by four, you’ll see a 10% reduction in student achievement,” he said. “When we examine the effects on student morale, the higher the class size, the less interest students showed in school.”

Education Research Service, a nonprofit organization in Arlington, Va., disputes the theory that smaller classes always leads to greater academic achievement. The organization believes that the ideal class size is 23 to 30 students. However, organization president Glen Robinson said the average class sizes in Los Angeles are “ridiculous. . . . When you get past about 30 students, you’re adding a number of problems to teachers.”

Although research provides some insight on the impact large class sizes are having on students, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

At Gage Middle School, a harried Jim Fiori tries to instruct a packed physical education class with little success. Some students shoot hoops while others wander around the basketball court or chat with friends.

“There’s no way I can supervise all these students,” Fiori said. “We’re pushing 76 or 77 students in one class.”

At Bell High, senior Danya Contreras tries to remain positive about school despite having three classes with at least 42 students: “When it comes to classes being packed, I don’t think it’s cool because we can’t really ask questions or anything.”

At Miles Avenue and most other elementary schools in the district, children are forbidden to run freely during recess or lunch period, unless it’s part of an organized activity.

“We can’t allow them to run, and that’s such a critical part of growing up,” said Feliciano Mendoza, a fifth-grade teacher at Miles Avenue. “I remember when I was in elementary school. All of a sudden, you get the urge to run around and chase each other, but that can’t be done at Miles. They’re constantly being ordered to walk.”

About 2,900 students attend Miles Avenue, making it the largest elementary school in the country. Before the school went year-round, hallways were equipped with chalkboard racks so that they could be used as classrooms when all other rooms were filled, Mendoza said. “When the school found out it was a fire hazard, they stopped doing it,” he said.

The obvious victims of crowding are students--about 22,756 other students are being bused because schools in their neighborhoods have reached capacity. District officials estimate that, by 1996, about 50,000 students will be bused because of overcrowding. (An additional 11,000 are bused through a voluntary integration program.)

The students, many of whom are of grade school age, start waiting as early as 6 a.m. for buses headed mostly for the Westside or the San Fernando Valley. The average bus ride is 75 minutes each way, Peyton said.

Although the program has reduced crowding, a 1990-91 study showed that bused students, particularly from predominantly minority schools, tend to score much lower on achievement tests than students at their home schools. For instance, seventh-graders bused for crowding reasons scored in the 27th percentile on the math portion of a national test, whereas those not bused scored in the 40th percentile. The national average is 50.

“If you take a child away from their neighborhood and require a child to wake up every morning before 6 so that they can ride a bus to school, it takes a toll,” Peyton said.

The most obvious way to remedy crowding is to build more schools. But even if the district had the money for construction projects, it could not build schools fast enough.

“In order to get where we need to be without multitrack programs, we need to build one school per day, seven days a week, for a year,” said Catherine Carey, director of communications for United-Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers union.

Dan Isaacs, the district’s assistant superintendent of senior high schools, said the district is in an impossible situation.

“Once you reach capacity at a school--and most of our high schools are already at capacity--you need to consider how you are going to provide more schools,” he said. “With the district’s financial situation, which doesn’t appear to be getting any better, I don’t see a lot of money becoming available to build new schools. It also takes three to five years to build a high school.”

Isaacs predicts that the district will be converting more schools to the multitrack, year-round calendar to take up some of the slack. Only six of the district’s 49 high schools now are multitrack schools.

But expansion plans may not get under way unless the district finds a way to pay for it, Peyton warns.

“As long as the state of California refuses to support education, I don’t see any hope for overcrowding, building new schools or for education,” she said.

Bursting at the Seams

As enrollment has risen in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, the number of classroom teachers has dropped and the average class sizes have risen. The average class sizes are lower for the first through tenth grades at schools with 70% or more minority students.

Student Enrollment (In thousands.)

‘88-’89: 594.8

‘89-’90: 610.2

‘90-’91: 625.5

‘91-’92: 639.7

‘92-’93: 655.0*

Classroom Teachers (In thousands.)

‘88-’89: 26.9

‘89-’90: 28.1

‘90-’91: 28.5

‘91-’92: 26.8

‘92-’93: 26.0