SUMMERTIME BLUES CROWDS, MANDATE KEEP SCHOOLS OPEN.

Byline: Joseph Giordono Staff Writer

Summer ain't what it used to be.

Faced with surging enrollment and a recent statewide mandate to end social promotion, schools throughout the region are switching to year-round calendars and requiring more students to attend summer school.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, thousands of struggling second- and eighth-graders are scheduled to start summer school today.

And last week, two-thirds of Van Nuys High School students found themselves back in class for a new academic year - just days after finishing the previous term.

``I don't want to be here right now,'' said Lashanda Courteney, a Van Nuys High junior. ``I know that we have to, but most of my other friends are out for the summer. I know a lot of people who transferred to other schools.''

Van Nuys is one of three LAUSD schools, along with Luther Burbank and Thomas Starr King middle schools, to adopt year-round schedules this year.

In all, 220 of the district's 681 schools are year-round, including 19 of its 49 high schools. And the number of such schools is expected to grow as the district's 722,000-student enrollment peaks in 2008 with 36,000 additional students. During that critical year, district officials anticipate more than 203,500 high school students, up from more than 167,000 this year.

Adding to the district's summertime population are more than 10,700 second-graders and 4,500 eighth-graders who are required to attend summer school before they can advance to the next grade. Next year, promotion standards will apply to third grade.

The requirement is part of a recent state law banning social promotion, the practice of moving students to the next grade despite poor academic performance. Under the law, districts are free to determine how they will enforce their promotion standards.

In the Simi Valley Unified School District, promotion standards affect students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Largely as a result, the district has about 500 more summer school students than last year, officials said.

``We are seeing more people taking advantage of the remediation,'' said Becky Wetzel, the district's director of elementary education. ``I think that parents understand more of the requirements that we have about not advancing students who are not ready to move on.''

About 1,200 elementary students have accepted the Burbank Unified School District's ``invitation'' to attend summer school, district officials said. That figure represents only about 20 percent to 25 percent of the children that the district identified as failing or in danger of being held back.

``There really isn't much we can do other than notify the parents. It is up to them to decide what to do with their child,'' said Andrea Canady, director of elementary education for the small suburban district.

Other local districts are already completely year-round and have integrated their summer programs into intersessions, or shortened periods of school between tracks.

In the Palmdale School District, where all schools are on year-round schedules, some 500 students are spending three hours a day for four weeks at the Pueblo Learning Center on their intersession breaks to catch up on schoolwork.

``There is no summer school. Unfortunately we are on a three-track calendar. It doesn't allow for any summer,'' said Greg Cary, administrator of the Pueblo center. ``We finished on Friday of last week, and classes started on Monday.''

In the Lancaster School District, at the one school that remains on a traditional calendar, more than 200 youngsters are at summer school held for failing eighth-graders and elementary schoolers who want to get ahead on their academics.

As students adjust to summer classes and an elongated school day, administrators, teachers and students at Van Nuys High are quietly implementing a new schedule that was approved by the school board just over a year ago.

``It was probably one of the most quiet opening days of school that I have ever seen,'' said Principal Herm Clay, in his second year at Van Nuys High after serving as assistant principal of Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks.

``We are still wrestling with getting the classes to the right size and some of the other problems, but the kids came in with a good attitude.''

Because it met the district threshold of busing more than 250 students to other schools, Van Nuys became the fifth Valley high school to be placed on a multitrack calendar, joining Monroe, Polytechnic, San Fernando and, most recently, North Hollywood.

For students and teachers, it is a major adjustment but a necessary one: Instead of a campus packed with 3,600 students, Van Nuys will now have 2,300 in class at any given time.

``I think that everyone realized that nothing was going to change it, so they just rolled with the punches,'' said Mary Alderman, an English teacher at Van Nuys for the past decade. ``I think that everybody has the right attitude, which is amazing.''

At schools that have been on year-round schedules for many years, the wrinkles have long since been ironed out.

``It takes a fair amount of time to get adjusted, but by now everyone knows how it works. Initially, the big challenge was to get teachers to share rooms and materials,'' said Joe Lucente, executive director of the Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace. That school shifted to a year-round schedule 10 years ago because of student overcrowding.

Though a Los Angeles County grand jury panel recently urged a study of year-round schools because of their consistently low standardized scores, teachers at Fenton said there are educational advantages to the schedule.

``One of the biggest things that I have noticed is that the kids don't lose as much information as they would over a long summer break,'' said Gaby Calzadillas, a third-grade teacher in her sixth year at Fenton.

``They remember the math and spelling skills that they have just learned, so you do not have to start out the new year and go back over the basics.''

Staff Writers Karen Maeshiro and Bhavna Mistry contributed to this story.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Fifteen-year-old student Karla Gonzalez, center, listens to an Advancement Via Individual Determination class lesson in the first week of year-round scheduling at Van Nuys High School.

(2 -- color) Students pack a biology class in July as Van Nuys High School begins year-round operations.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer

(3 -- color) Gaby Calzadillas, a teacher at Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace, prepares lessons for her third-graders.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer