ANNUAL FRENZY BEGINS AT L.A. SCHOOLS.

Byline: Terri Hardy and Sherry Joe Crosby Daily News Staff Writers

The pandemonium at Sherman Oaks Elementary School on the first day of classes Wednesday played out similarly across Los Angeles: crying children, concerned parents and harried staffers trying to sort it all out.

``What can I say? It's chaos!'' said Jo Williams, an instructional aide at the school.

Into the fray walked 6-year-old Morgan Terrelle Ferguson, her stride confident, her smile wide and her backpack new. A veteran of private school, the second-grader was ecstatic to finally have convinced her parents to let her attend public school.

``I've been in private school all my life, and it's been getting boring,'' Morgan said with a sigh.

While some parents, including Morgan's, spent the morning adjusting to their children's new schools, others reluctantly embraced the first day as a benchmark in their child's life.

``I'm sad he's growing up, but I'm happy for him too,'' said Mitra Golzy, whose nearly 5-year-old son, Navid, is attending kindergarten at the Sherman Oaks school.

A staggered start

Wednesday was the first day of school for many of the Los Angeles Unified School District's 661 campuses. But because schools are allowed to choose how many teacher training days to hold before the first day of school, other campuses are opening today, Friday and Monday.

School administrators said each campus is responsible for alerting parents to when classes begin, and parent-teacher-student organizations reported no problems.

In Burbank and Glendale, classes will start Monday, and those in La Canada Flintridge will begin today.

Key in the 1997-98 school year is the expansion of an ambitious state plan to cut the number of pupils in classrooms to no more than 20 in kindergarten through third grades. But to do so, the district is finding itself engaged in a mad scramble for teachers and portable classrooms.

At the same time, the schools are trying to accommodate a surge in enrollment - most pronounced in parts of the San Fernando Valley - by opening previously closed campuses.

Because of Board of Education delays, schools learned only two weeks ago that they would be required to shrink class sizes in third grade and kindergarten. That left educators, stung by bad experiences from last year's efforts to cut class sizes, scrambling to reconfigure their schools as they anticipate another enrollment crush.

Morgan's parents said they were swayed to transfer their daughter from a private school to a public one partially because of class-size reduction plans.

``I'm glad her room will only have 20 kids,'' Sylvia Ferguson said.

No space

School administrators across the Valley said they will be forced to use auditoriums, parent rooms and teachers lounges to comply with the district's class-size reduction policy.

Already on order are 550 double portables to provide 1,100 classrooms. By the end of the year, the district likely will require 700 bungalows, said Gordon Wohlers, assistant superintendent for school and management initiatives.

There are 53 campuses so overcrowded that they are incapable of adding any more portable classrooms on their grounds.

To allow one of those schools, Van Nuys Elementary, to shrink classes in its third grade, the auditorium will be divided into two classrooms.

At Sherman Oaks Elementary, some of the portable classrooms promised last year never arrived - forcing the school to drop its plans to shrink second grade. Now Principal Ed Krojansky faces the prospect of lowering class sizes in kindergarten, second and third grades this year.

District officials don't want to create more disappointment and refuse to say when all portables will be delivered. Krojansky said he's been told it will take 12 to 18 months.

In the meantime, some classes will be placed in the school's library.

``It's a numbers game,'' Krojansky said. ``They've got to get so many bungalows out to so many schools - it's not going to happen overnight.''

At Woodland Hills Elementary, where classes start today, teachers will reduce third-grade class sizes by giving up their faculty lounge and school library.

Newly created classrooms have driven the district to engage in a massive hiring effort, and officials hope to bring 2,200 elementary teachers on board by the state's November deadline, said Michael Acosta, employment operations administrator.

Team approach

Kindergarten teachers are upset about a controversial Board of Education edict that required all schools to ``team teach'' their classes, even if there was room at some schools to shrink those classes to 20 students.

Robbi Stein, an afternoon kindergarten teacher at Sherman Oaks Elementary, said the plan will mean teachers will give up their valuable preparation time and won't improve children's education.

``All the teachers are upset,'' Stein said. ``Having two teachers and all those kids isn't really class-size reduction.''

A whopping 680,000 students are expected to enroll this year, with some of the largest growth expected in the eastern and central sections of the Valley, Wohlers said.

To ease the situation, the district has opened shuttered schools like Garden Grove Elementary in Van Nuys. It welcomed students Wednesday for the first time after a 13-year hiatus with few problems.

``It's got air conditioning, and they're going to have computers in the library, and every classroom will have TVs and VCRs,'' said Evelyn Fuller, whose two sons attend third and fifth grades at Garden Grove.

Burbank and Glendale

Schools will open today in the La Canada Unified School District in the Glendale foothills, with changes including remodeled classrooms and a new technology program in elementary schools.

When the 4,250 students in the La Canada Flintridge area return to class, the majority will find schools with new air conditioning, electrical systems and other improvements.

``I think people are more excited than they have been in a long time about the start of school,'' said Superintendent Jim Davis. ``When you are small like our district, you can move quickly'' on projects.

Schools in the larger Burbank Unified and Glendale Unified school districts that are not on a year-round calendar will start Monday.

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PHOTO (color) Nidya Pattison gives name tags to her kindergarten class at Garden Grove Elementary in Van Nuys.

David Sprague/Daily News

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