ESL CLASSES POPULAR AT HUGHES : VALLEY ADULT SCHOOL SERVES GROWING NEED AMONG IMMIGRANT STUDENTS.

Byline: Dennis Love Daily News Staff Writer

When Yolanda Manriquez immigrated to the San Fernando Valley from Mexico a few years ago, she didn't worry about learning English. Her friends and family all spoke Spanish, so it was the only language she really needed to get by.

But time - and children - have a way of playing havoc with one's priorities. With her two boys now of school age and speaking English, Manriquez felt the need to converse in English with them and their teachers.

That is how Manriquez found herself last week in an English as a second language class with about two dozen other students at the Hughes Adult Learning Center. The center is part of the El Camino-Canoga Park Community Adult School, which recently opened on the site of the old Hughes Junior High School in Woodland Hills.

``My kids are why I'm here,'' Manriquez said in Spanish interpreted by her English instructor, Dennis Rudmin. ``I want to be able to help them. . . . I want to know what they are doing in school.''

Manriquez is among 350 students who attend classes of many kinds at the Hughes campus.

ESL classes are the biggest draw, said Maureen Jensen, principal of El Camino-Canoga Park Community Adult School. But the reclaimed campus - Hughes Junior High was built in 1969, then closed in June 1983 because of insufficient enrollment - also offers other courses in citizenship, parenting, computers, even acting and gardening. Most courses are free.

Jensen predicts that attendance at the adult school likely will double in the fall when more classes are offered.

``It's an exciting time because this campus will be growing and will become a focal point for the community,'' Jensen said.

Some 600,000 people attend LAUSD community classes during a typical year, said Lupe Reyes, director of adult education for the district. All classes are full, she said, which makes new centers like Hughes all the more critical.

``And what makes that campus unique is that it is not attached to a high school or other facility like most of our community schools,'' Reyes said. ``So we will have much more flexibility in terms of how we can use the space and what we can offer our students.''

As the immigrant population in Los Angeles has ballooned, neighborhood adult schools have become one of the primary cultural entry points.

``We have seen people come in here, literally with a suitcase in their hands,'' said David Halabe, assistant principal at El Camino-Canoga Community Adult School. ``Some of them even come carrying a slip of paper with a English teacher's name written on it, provided by a friend or relative who took the course before.

``These schools are definitely the melting pot in action,'' Halabe said.

The ultimate goal for El Camino-Canoga Park Community Adult School is to become ``the Evans of the Valley,'' Jensen said, alluding to the bustling downtown adult education facility. ``It's gratifying to be able to resurrect this campus for such a pressing need.''

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Photo: Greg McHenry teaches an English as a second language class at Hughes Adult Learning Center in Woodland Hills.

Myung J. Chun/Daily News