Push Comes to Shove at Crowded L.A. Schools

In Southern California, students skip meals and delay going to the restroom because the lines are longer than the lunch period. Rushing to get to class on time, mobs of students fight their way through narrow doors and cramped hallways, often enduring shoves, bruising, dirty looks and loud obscenities from frustrated peers.

Once inside classrooms jammed with three dozen or more bodies, students with desks study elbow to elbow while those without sit hunched on stools or counters, using their laps as a desktop.

“It’s like there’s no room for students at this school,� said Estela Hernandez, 17, a senior at Van Nuys High School. “I get tired moving around the campus. It’s stressful. There’s just too many people.�

For many students, school has become a survival of the fittest. As surging enrollment continues to shrink classroom space in the state for the fifth straight year, many students say they spend more energy navigating crowds and coping with cramped conditions than learning. As if young people do not have enough to worry about these days, walking onto a chaotic campus makes their lives even more stressful, experts say.

The state’s growing pains stretch beyond urban centers. In the Las Virgenes Unified School District in affluent western Los Angeles County, middle school students bemoan having to share gym lockers and sit three to a seat on the school bus.

Perhaps nowhere is the problem worse than in Los Angeles Unified School District. With a record 723,230 students--about 12,000 more than last year--the district buses 15,000 students because of overcrowding. Eighteen of its high schools operate on multitrack year-round calendars, with enrollment on some campuses reaching 5,000 students.

The district’s school construction plan calls for adding 65,000 seats over the next five to six years, but officials acknowledge that finding adequate land in dense, industrial areas is difficult. Even if the district meets its construction goals, officials expect to come up 15,000 seats short based on enrollment projections.

District Supt. Roy Romer dismissed student complaints, saying they could be used as excuses for not learning.

“It sounds like they’re children whining,� Romer said. “Life doesn’t come at you easy. . . . We just have to buckle down and work harder.�

Shari Jones, 14, rises at 4:30 a.m. on most school days to help with chores, get ready for school and catch a bus from her home in South-Central Los Angeles to El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills.

She wishes she could study or sleep on the hourlong bus ride, but students are squished three to a seat. “So there’s not much room to do anything but sit there, and it’s always noisy and cramped,� she said.

By the time she arrives at school, sometimes late for her first-period French class, Shari said she is exhausted. “I get to class and I want to go to sleep,� she said.

The rest of her day resembles an obstacle course. “You have to fight to get through the doors, because there’s so many people. The classrooms are hot and stuffy from a lot of kids being in one place. It’s uncomfortable and hard to concentrate.� Sometimes she eats candy for lunch, because the cafeteria lines are too long.

“You get used to all the people,� said Shari, who earns A’s and Bs. “I like it here, but I wish the schools in my neighborhood weren’t so crowded.�

No matter how hard students work, researchers and psychologists insist overcrowding hampers learning and contributes to feelings of worthlessness and alienation among students when teachers and administrators are too busy to notice them.

This magnifies normal adolescent insecurities and could push some middle and high school students to go to extreme measures for recognition, from dying their hair orange to joining gangs, said Michael Gerson, a clinical psychologist in Westlake Village who specializes in children and teenagers.

“I hear a lot of kids talking about feeling anonymous at school,� Gerson said. “A lot of them don’t feel valued at their schools.�

When sisters Maya and Moran Mayer, ages 18 and 17 respectively, moved to the San Fernando Valley from Panama City last winter, they had a hard time adjusting, with 3,400 students at El Camino Real. “Sometimes, teachers don’t even know all the students,� Moran Mayer said. “It’s not their fault, because the classes are too big, but it’s easy to get lost.�

At Van Nuys High, which reached its 3,600-student capacity this fall and will probably convert to year-round next year, students describe endless restroom lines, overflowing lunch tables and classrooms crammed with desks. “I’ll be in a good mood in the morning,� said Rene Rendon, 17, “and then I get ticked off, because there’s so many people.�

Like a rational person who suddenly becomes enraged in traffic, students suffocating in crowded classrooms or clogged hallways are prone to behavioral problems, including violence, researchers say.

Look no further than a study in 1949 on how docile fish reacted when crammed into tight quarters, suggested Chuck Achilles, a noted education professor at Eastern Michigan University who has studied class-size reduction.

“The normally calm fish ate their youngsters and killed each other,� said Achilles, citing a similar study on rats in 1959.

Seventh-grader Jennifer Gray recalled being yelled at by a big girl she accidentally bumped into in a crowded outdoor walkway at Portola Middle School in Tarzana.

“She called me the B-word,� Jennifer, 12, said. “Then she said, ‘What are you doing? Get out of my way.’ I didn’t like it. It’s stressful. It’s like chaos. You get stepped on and pushed around.�

To top it off, many students lug heavy backpacks because the rush-hour hallway jams prevent them from stopping at their lockers.

Camille Arca, 12, a petite Portola seventh-grader whose backpack seemed to weigh more than she does, said it slows her down. “Then I get stressed, because I don’t want to be late for class and get in trouble,� she said.

Even principals and teachers acknowledge that students would be better served in less-congested schools with smaller classes, although they say they are doing their best under dire circumstances.

Nationwide, an estimated 53 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students enrolled in public and private schools this fall, the highest enrollment ever, according to a report released last month by the U.S. Department of Education.

With California leading the way, the student population is expected to continue growing for the next decade, largely a result of immigration and an expanding birth rate that began in 1997, the report stated.

In Santa Ana Unified School District, parents have complained that portable classrooms placed near the front of an elementary school created confusion. Portables also hog playground space.

“Children need to play,� Santa Ana Supt. Al Mijares said. “But because of the portables, not every child can be in a kickball game.�

Crowding also has contributed to unsafe traffic conditions around Santa Ana schools, Mijares said. The district recently hired a police officer to help pedestrians and enforce driving laws. “We’ve had fender benders, frayed nerves and too many near-misses,� Mijares said. “You could see an accident waiting to happen.�

With so many people clustered in one area, the physical condition of schools deteriorates quickly. Trampled grass dies. Former gardens serve as makeshift parking lots. Litter abounds. School plant managers say they scramble to clean restrooms and ward off pests.

Supplies in elective courses, such as art and music, run short. In Beverley Craig’s orchestra class at Portola, the number of students has outpaced the instruments, so students share them or just practice using mouthpieces.

Michal Kamran, 12, a seventh-grader at Portola, said he gets bored when it’s not his turn to use the cello.

“It’s time wasted,� he said. “I try to follow along, but it’s not the same. I count the holes in the ceiling. I could be learning more, but there are too many people.�