NEWHALL : Year-Round School Foes Lose Recount

Opponents of a multi-track, year-round school calendar in Newhall lost in a recount of petition signatures, the Los Angeles County registrar said Wednesday.

The announcement was the last hurdle to the Newhall School District enacting a year-round schedule at Valencia Valley and Wiley Canyon elementary schools in late July.

“It means that people can get on with their lives,” board member Pat Willett said. “This on-again, off-again thing had just been very painful.”

Had the recount succeeded, the use of multi-track, year-round education in the district would have been put on a ballot in a special June election.

In rejecting 2,508 of the petition’s 8,277 signatures, spokeswoman Marcia Ventura said 1,808 of the signees were found not to be registered to vote, 517 others were registered but not in the district where the election would take place, 163 of the signatures were duplicates and the remaining 20 were improperly registered.

Last month, the registrar had found that 2,773 of the signatures collected were invalid. A recount was taken this month at the behest of multi-track, year-round education opponents.