SECOND CHANCE CLASSES END OF SOCIAL PROMOTION LEADS TO SUMMER SCHOOL.

Byline: Erik Nelson Staff Writer

SYLMAR - From the White House to the statehouse, the nation is demanding that children meet minimum standards before schools promote them to the next grade.

For 8-year-old Francisco Gamez of Sylmar, meeting those standards means it's not enough to remember that the peacock bit the girl's nose at the zoo in the story he read last week. It means carefully penciling down why the girl got too close to the cage in the first place.

Francisco is one of 11 children at Harding Street School in Sylmar - and one of 6,000 districtwide - who was not promoted to the third grade because his reading skills fell below state requirements. This summer, during a special six-week, 90-hour class, he has another chance to join his third-grade friends in September.

And the pressure is on.

``Right now he's worried,'' said Francisco's mother, Cecilia Gamez. ``He says, 'If I don't pass, then I'm going to be the biggest kid in the classroom.' He's got more feelings now; he's 8 years old.''

For the first time, Los Angeles Unified students in second and eighth grades who fail reading and English are required to attend summer school before they can advance to the next grade level. The new requirement is part of a recent state law banning social promotion, or the practice of moving students to the next grade despite poor academic performance.

Last week, mandatory summer school began for an estimated 6,000 second-graders and 1,000 eighth-graders. During the second day of their intervention class at Harding, students practiced writing short words with ``a'' in the middle - ``hat,'' ``span,'' ``stamp.''

One of Francisco's classmates, a brown-haired boy in a blue striped shirt, whispered ``yes!'' each time he spelled a word correctly. Soon other children joined in, exclaiming ``yes!'' each time their teacher, Florence Krokos, wrote the word on the white board. She used a blue marker for the ``a,'' and a green marker for the rest of the letters to highlight the repeated letter and vowel sound.

But for the stakes involved, it could be any other second-grade classroom. Gamez knows differently, though. She realizes her son needs help.

``It's a positive change now, but I'm really upset, because this should have been done a long time ago,'' Gamez said.

Since he started school, Francisco has had to overcome obstacles presented by the district, Gamez said.

To start with, he attends year-round schools, which have fewer days of instruction and slightly longer hours than schools on traditional September through June schedules. Then her son, whose first language is English, was placed in a bilingual class at Morningside School in San Fernando.

``The teacher kept saying things in Spanish to him, and he was very confused,'' Gamez said.

Then there was a string of substitutes who filled in while school officials attempted to hire permanent teachers.

``Everyone was teaching him something different,'' Gamez said.

Carmen Torres, whose daughter, Brianna, attends the same summer class at Harding, also reported bad experiences, ending in what she called a traumatic first-grade year.

``I would be in tears some days because she didn't want to go to school,'' Torres said of her 8-year-old daughter.

But last year, a new teacher at Harding helped Brianna catch up to the point where she could read to her class. But she still fell short of the new requirements, so now she too is attending the summer class.

``At first I wasn't really happy, but I said to myself that this was going to help her. It is such a good program.''

And the program is more than just an extra summer paycheck to Krokos, too.

``I think we've been pushing kids along without the skills that they need to be successful at every stage of the game,'' Krokos said.

Under the new policy, students who don't pass the summer intervention program are put in small remedial classes with 10 students per teacher. The aim is to help struggling students catch up to their peers while they focus on reading and writing basics as well as test preparation and study skills.

To pass summer school, students must demonstrate proficiency in reading or English.

Looking at Francisco's initial work, Krokos pointed out key problems. Last week, the children read a story about a girl going to the zoo, and Francisco wrote that the girl ``got to clos to the peacock and the peacock bit the geirl when she got their.''

While Francisco misspelled some words, his real problem stemmed from his inability to fully comprehend the story. He failed to mention why the girl got so close to the cage in the first place.

Reading comprehension helps determine promotion to the next grade, Krokos explained.

On Thursday, a day after the writing assignment, Francisco recollected the story. He's already learned one thing: he likes his summer class.

``It's different,'' Francisco said thoughtfully. ``I like reading. I like to read a lot.''

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo: (1) Francisco Gamez, 8, and teacher Florence Krokos discuss an assignment. John McCoy/Staff Photographer