CONEJO DISTRICT AHEAD IN NET GAME : COMPREHENSIVE PLAN NEARLY DONE.

Byline: Enrique Rivero Daily News Staff Writer

Parents, teachers and other volunteers nationwide will be wiring schools for cyberspace on NetDay '96 - but not in the Conejo Valley.

Officials at the Las Virgenes and Oak Park unified school districts say they have already advanced so far with their plan for wiring schools for the information superhighway that they don't need to rely on volunteers.

Several Conejo Valley Unified School District campuses already have much of the necessary wiring, and officials are working up a comprehensive plan for fully hooking up their 31 schools.

``The concept is nice, but designating a single day, especially early in the school year, doesn't always work for every school,'' said Chuck Eklund, director of secondary instruction in the Conejo district. ``Because we can see it's possible to get on the Internet, there's more motivation to do it. But I don't think it has to be tied to a particular day.''

Saturday's daylong effort is Phase Two of NetDay '96. In the first phase in March, thousands of volunteers installed Internet wiring in public and private schools across the country. According to the California Department of Education's technology office, 4,000 schools statewide were wired during the effort earlier this year.

Other schools in the area are expected to participate in Saturday's event, intended to assist a portion of the 9,000 schools that didn't get wired into the Internet in March. In Simi Valley, for example, Santa Susana High School will install about 16,000 feet of wire to connect the magnet school's 115 computers into the Internet.

There's no need for Las Virgenes Unified School District to participate in NetDay because it is well into its ambitious plan to plug all its schools into the information superhighway, said Donald Zimring, assistant superintendent of business services.

``We like to think every day is NetDay at our school district,'' Zimring said.

Since last year all 13 Las Virgenes campuses have been wired for the Internet, with the next phase being to wire all 400 or so classrooms in the district, he said. So far, seven of the district's eight elementary schools are fully wired, classrooms and all, with only Yerba Buena elementary yet to be completed, he said.

The entire project should be done by school year's end, he said. In addition, the district is continuing to buy more computers and recently ordered 120 more, he said. ``Our goal is to get to a ratio of about one-to-five computers to youngsters,'' Zimring said.

Conejo Valley Superintendent Jerry Gross said that his district's comprehensive plan should be presented to the school board in about two months.

Already much of the necessary wiring has been done at Ladera, Banyan, Aspen, Cypress and Wildwood schools, he said. And other schools are wired up to varying degrees.

``Every school has at least one e-mail access,'' he said.

Other schools need much more work. For example, Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks high schools need to upgrade their electrical systems, according to Eklund.

``They're old schools and the electrical service available to the schools was insufficient to do what we wanted to do,'' he said. ``They're in the process of doing an assessment and installation plan.''

The Oak Park district has been installing wiring to its five campuses for about a year now and won't be participating Saturday, Superintendent Marilyn Lippiatt said.

``We're essentially in the very final stages of connecting each and every classroom with an Internet outside system,'' she said. ``Our finishing work is more internal right now.''

Every school should be wired by Nov. 1, she said. The district also plans to upgrade its computers and train teachers so the district will be able to take full advantage of the Internet, she said.