Playground Size Rule Is New Hurdle for Schools

In the race to reduce primary grade class size, 60 Los Angeles Unified School District campuses have hit a high hurdle: rules governing playground size that could prevent those schools from squeezing portable classrooms onto already crowded playgrounds.

Those density restrictions are part of the so-called Rodriguez Consent Decree, a legal agreement that aims to equalize spending among Los Angeles Unified’s 640 campuses, to improve the education of students at the district’s poorest schools.

Many of those schools are already using every available classroom and closet, leaving them few options for accommodating the extra classes that will be created if they reduce first and second grade classes from 32 to 20 students to take advantage of the state’s new funding program.

The minimum playground standards are intended to ensure that even on the most packed campuses, students have room to run and play.

That such restrictions could now deprive children at those schools of the benefits of smaller classes is an irony not lost on attorneys who fought for the decree. They are now inching toward a compromise with the school district that would allow the schools--many of them in the district’s poorest, most congested neighborhoods--to shrink their first and second grade classes.

“There are no schools where we think class size reduction cannot be worked out. We’re committed to that,” said Lew Hollman, an attorney with San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services. “We just want to talk about the best way to have it done.”

Children at the most crowded schools may be most in need of the extra attention a lower student-teacher ratio would provide, Hollman said. In fact, reducing class size was one suggestion in the decree for schools trying to bring their spending up to the level of their richer counterparts.

The movement to reduce class size was sparked by a state budget deal that sets aside $971 million in incentives for schools that cut class size to 20 students in up to three grades by February, including first, second and either kindergarten or third grades. Districts across the state are scrambling to meet that deadline, hiring thousands of new teachers, erecting bungalow classrooms and using every nook and cranny of existing school buildings to house the new classes the reduction will create.

In Los Angeles Unified, 217 of the district’s 457 elementaries and magnet schools have space within their buildings to accommodate new classes. Another 177 have room on their property to place portable classrooms.

But a final 63 “need further analysis,” and nearly all are schools already out of compliance with the density guidelines.

The district’s school utilization director Dale Braun said the restrictions posed by the legal pact are but one example of how complex a seemingly simple plan--cutting class size to improve reading instruction--can become in a large school district.

The Rodriguez agreement settled a 1992 lawsuit brought by a group of African American and Latino parents. It emphasized equalizing the money each school spends on staffing, to correct an imbalance created by the tendency of higher-paid veteran teachers to seek assignments in suburban campuses, forcing inner-city schools to rely on lower-paid novice instructors.

But in a less-publicized dictate, it also set a minimum for playground space--ranging from 1.4 acres for schools with up to 750 students to 2.3 acres for 1,250-pupil campuses. That stricture provides about 80 square feet--a patch of asphalt measuring 8 feet by 10 feet--for each student.

Principals say it is essential that students have enough space to stretch and run without bumping into one another, especially in inner-city areas where after-school play may be difficult, even dangerous.

“Boys and girls in this neighborhood are not allowed to go out and play when they get home from school,” said Mary Shambra, principal of Fletcher Drive School in Glassell Park. “They live in apartments that are crowded and it’s not safe for them to go out in the streets and play. . . . With the exception of some weekend trips to the parks, this is the only play time they get.”

Many schools already suffer with impossibly small playgrounds, and seven are in such bad shape that adding portables would leave them with half the play space required by the legal pact.

Those seven schools all lie within congested neighborhoods, from the Eastside through downtown and out toward Mid-Wilshire--and are already holding classes year-round to accommodate spiraling enrollment.

The worst off is Woodlawn Elementary, a year-round school in Bell which has just over one acre of playground and nearly 1,200 students--about 1,000 of whom attend school at any given time. The school would need nearly twice that big a playground to meet the Rodriguez requirements.

The school tries to minimize playground crowding by scheduling three recesses and four lunches, a juggling act which finds the uniformed children filing past each other in long lines as one break ends and another begins.

Finding room within the buildings is a similar story. Every decision concerning space sets off a chain reaction. When the school decided to add a library this summer, it had to move two classes, which forced closure of the school’s cherished science lab and drove another storage bin onto the playground.

Woodlawn would need six classrooms to reduce its first and second grades. Using portables would shave off a crucial corner of the playground. School committees are scheduled to begin meeting next week to devise an alternate plan.

“It’s going to be a heart-wrenching thing, but we’re going to come up with something,” said Assistant Principal Cynthia Williams, whose office also houses the school’s main copy machine and serves as the foyer to a public bathroom.

Williams’ confidence mirrors that of other principals and administrators as Los Angeles Unified scrambles to make the reduction a reality.

At Fletcher Drive School, Shambra convened a meeting of her first and second-grade teachers soon after the state class size reduction legislation passed in mid-July and they came up with several creative ideas for the 1,000-student school, including moving fifth-graders to the middle school next door. Fletcher also could add one more portable, if the Rodriguez attorneys agree, because its playground is only slightly smaller than the guidelines allow.

In fact, the only thing holding Fletcher Drive back is uncertainty about how district and state officials will rule on details important to the school’s implementation plan.

“I would not want my faculty to spend the time developing a plan, getting emotionally invested in a plan, then have to tell them that they have to abandon that plan because it will not be allowed,” Shambra said.

The school district will try to respond to those kinds of concerns at a series of meetings between principals and district administrators, beginning next week.

And administrators are continuing to grapple with more basic complications: The district has hired only about 100 of the 2,600 extra elementary school teachers it estimates it will need to scale back classes, and has received only a few of the 500 portable classrooms it ordered in July.

Furthermore, district officials must find ways to supplement state class size reduction funding by carving an estimated $30 million a year out of its nearly $4.5-billion budget to pay for the additional teachers and classroom bungalows.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Playground Space Crunch

As schools in the Los Angeles Unified district scramble to reduce primary class sizes, some face the additional complication of a legal agreement that dictates the size of their playgrounds. These campuses would be the furthest out of compliance with the pact if they use portable classrooms to shrink class size from 32 to 20 pupils.

*--*

Playground acreage School Enrollment Goal w/Portables Bryson Elementary South Gate 1,237 2 acres 0.9 acres Dayton Heights Elementary Central City 1,058 2 1.1 Hoover Elementary Westlake 2,203 2.3 1.0 Monte Vista Elementary Highland Park 1,021 1.7 0.8 Ramona Elementary Central City 1,256 2 0.9 Victoria Elementary South Gate 1,514 2 1.1 Woodlawn Elementary Bell 1,189 2 0.8

School % of Goal Bryson Elementary South Gate 45% Dayton Heights Elementary Central City 55% Hoover Elementary Westlake 43% Monte Vista Elementary Highland Park 47% Ramona Elementary Central City 45% Victoria Elementary South Gate 55% Woodlawn Elementary Bell 40%

*--*

Source: Los Angeles Times analysis of Los Angeles Unified School District data and the Rodriguez Consent Decree density guidelines.