ELECTIONS : Year-Round Schools May Have a Long Wait : Ventura: Voter rejection means nine- month schedule will be in force for at least three years. But six campuses have already switched.

By rejecting a ballot proposal on year-round education, Ventura voters have ensured that most of the district will remain on a traditional nine-month calendar for at least the next three years.

State law requires that the school board wait at least two years before voting on an issue that was rejected by voters, school officials said.

“For two years, we can’t touch it,” said Supt. Joseph Spirito of the Ventura Unified School District.

Even if the board voted in the fall of 1995 to put all the district’s 25 schools on a year-round schedule, they would have to wait at least another year before implementing the change, officials said.

The proposal, Measure U, was defeated Tuesday by a margin of 52% to 48%, or 913 votes. The initiative was supported by 11,086 voters while 11,999 rejected it.

In addition, voters chose among six candidates to fill three school board seats.

Bilingual educator Cliff Rodrigues captured 21.6% of the vote to win a seat and incumbent John B. Walker came in second with 20.8%, allowing him to return to the dais.

Parent-Teachers Assn. leader Velma L. Lomax came in third, holding a 343-vote lead over former Buena High School Principal Michael Shanahan.

But county election officials said Wednesday they are now counting 4,000 absentee ballots in the Ventura area that could tighten the margin between Lomax and Shanahan and could even hand the race to the former principal.

“That will be, as far as I’m concerned, the closest of races,” county elections registrar Bruce Bradley said Wednesday of the Ventura school board contest.

But Lomax, apparently, was not too worried. “It only takes one vote to win.”

With the election of Rodrigues and the probable victory of Lomax, the board would have four members who support the year-round schedule.

Present board members Diane Harriman and Jim Wells have also said they would support switching, while Walker is neutral on the issue.

Although the new board could not vote on a districtwide calendar change, it could during the next two years continue the old policy of allowing individual schools to decide independently whether to convert to a year-round schedule.

Six Ventura schools have already moved off the traditional calendar: Arnaz, E. P. Foster, Mound, Oak View and Sheridan Way elementary schools and DeAnza Middle School.

They will continue their year-round schedule, which gives them the same number of class days as a traditional calendar but with shorter summer vacations and more frequent breaks throughout the year.

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Last year, six other Ventura elementary schools wanted to convert to a year-round calendar.

But officials were concerned about having half the district’s schools on one schedule and half on another. Many families complained of having one child on a year-round calendar and another the traditional schedule, district officials said.

Saying the district would be better off if all schools were on the same schedule, officials had hoped to get a clear message from voters about year-round education.

Instead, voters showed they are split on the issue.

And now some school officials and parents are questioning the board’s wisdom in putting the matter before voters.

“The more I think about it,” Lomax said, “it was probably something that should not have been on the ballot. Why should people with no children in school make the decision?”

Like some other Measure U supporters who were disappointed by the results, Lomax suspects that voters without school-age children may have tipped the scales against the initiative.

“I guess the school board’s going to have to abide by the wishes of the people,” said Nicky van Nieuwburg, president of the Ventura council of parent-teachers associations. “The people have spoken. But which people have spoken? I’d love to know the percentage of who voted (while) it doesn’t even affect them.”

But Van Nieuwburg acknowledged that the reverse could also be true: Senior citizens, young people with no children and others without direct interest in the schools may have accounted for most of the yes votes on Measure U.

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County election officials said they have no profile of the age, occupations or families of the people who voted Tuesday.

Even though the board cannot vote for at least two years on a districtwide calendar change, Lomax said she would support allowing individual schools to convert to a year-round schedule if parents, teachers and school staff show strong support for the change.

Walker said, however, he would resist continuing the policy of allowing changes on a school-by-school basis.

“I don’t want to back down that same road, least-wise not right now,” Walker said.

And Walker defended the board’s decision to put the year-round question before voters. Changing the school calendar, he said, would affect other people in the community besides parents.

“It really impacts a lot of people,” Walker said. “It impacts day-care providers. It impacts all of the support functions that go along with having kids, like the YMCA, the summer programs. There’s also a group of people that are coming of age that are beginning to raise families.”

Supporters argue that the year-round calendar is academically superior because both students and teachers perform better with frequent vacations.

Opponents say such benefits are unproven and that year-round calendars may cause problems at high schools, where students attend summer school, earn extra money and practice for fall sports during the long summer vacations.

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Although Spirito also defended the board’s decision to put Measure U on the ballot, he said voters who rejected the proposal probably were more concerned about how year-round education would affect their lifestyle than their children’s academic progress.

“What you’ve got is a change in schedules, vacations, working conditions for some high school kids, sports programs,” he said. “People like the comfort level of what we’ve done for years.”