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Belmont Track System
"What makes our school even more unusual is that it never closes."
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to this Commentary!
By Arena Peregrina
I started as a freshman at Belmont High School last year. Our school is different
than most. Half of the students moved here recently from Mexico and Latin America,
and most of the rest of us were born here in the U.S. Most of us speak Spanish
at home. But what makes our school even more unusual is that it never closes.
Belmont is in session year-round.
“Year Round” means that the school has too many students to teach all at once,
so instead of everyone being together for 9 months sharing the traditional 3-month
summer vacation, students are divided into 3 sub-groups called “tracks,” each
with a different schedule. At any given time, more than three thousand students
are in session, and the other two thousand are on a two-month vacation.
Here’s how it works. A-track students start in August and end in June- but they
have two two-month breaks during the year. They are lucky enough to have sort
of a normal year. The B-track kids are the most affected. B-track kids start
in July and end in June…as crazy as that sounds, they don’t have a break between
the end of one school year and the beginning of the next. For example, if my
last day of freshman year were a Friday, then after the weekend on Monday, I
would become a tenth grader.
With so many vacations, it’s hard to remember what we learned before the break
when we get back to class. Counselors get stressed out at the last minute because
they have more than 5,000 schedules to figure out, so they keep packing students
into classes that don’t have any room left. Students start to act like sheep
and teachers are like robots.
We get our textbooks right away for most classes, but lockers aren’t issued
until the 6th week. So we have to carry a stack of 4 and 5 pound books up long
staircases, and on crowded busses. Sometimes I even get bruises from all the
pushing and shoving through people with heavy books. The Mexican American Legal
Defense Fund has even brought a lawsuit against the school district for neglecting
to provide a good education to kids like us.
Why is it that our school system offers less to inner city, minority students
when we really need more? Sometimes I ask myself why it is that more than 40%
of Latinos in the U.S. don’t graduate high school. If I look at my own school
for the answers, it’s not hard to figure out. How can people expect us to learn
or even graduate high school under these conditions? We can’t. That’s why my
mom decided to take me out of the LA public school system and look for an alternative
way for me to get a decent education.
- Arena Peregrina is a student at Belmont High School and comes to us
from Youth Radio L.A.
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