Attendance Slips as Schools Settle Into Strike Routine

The usual excuse for being late to third-period classes at San Fernando High School--long food lines during the mid-morning snack break--fooled no one Wednesday. With fewer than 15% of the school’s 2,100 students left on campus by the time the 10 a.m. break rolled around, the usual jockeying for food was over in a matter of minutes.

“Nobody’s ever late anymore,” said one student, stretched out on a bench in an area that on a non-strike day would have been mobbed with students, all wanting for a seat.

‘Howard the Duck’

After the snack break, janitors picked up the few random food wrappers in a matter of seconds and went back to tending flower beds. In the cafeteria, students watched a videotape of the George Lucas movie “Howard the Duck,” a fantasy tale about a talking duck from another planet that students joked was “biology class.” In the school’s library--normally abuzz with studying--one table of students played the popular game Pictionary while others played chess.

“It’s better because it’s not that crowded, but it’s boring because there’s no teachers here,” said Layla Gonzales, 16, a junior playing the board game with four friends in the library.

The deserted atmosphere was typical Wednesday at many of the San Fernando Valley’s high schools on the third day of the Los Angeles Unified School District teacher strike. A school district spokesman said districtwide attendance dropped from Tuesday to Wednesday by nearly 37,000 students to 288,000 students out of a pre-strike enrollment of about 590,000.

Attendance reported at Valley high schools had ranged earlier in the week from a low of about 29% at San Fernando to a high of 49% at Taft High School in Woodland Hills. School-by-school attendance figures for Wednesday were not available but officials said the numbers had plunged. In addition, many students stayed for only the first two periods of the day, until their presence was officially recorded.

“I think the attendance will drop and drop,” said Bart Kricorian, the principal at San Fernando High. “Students start leaving school as they see that their teachers aren’t here, even though we have others for them to go to.”

Kricorian said there were 750 students in school as of the second period, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., when attendance is officially recorded. But by third period he estimated that only 250 remained.

That meant that halls were dark and deserted, echoing with a visitor’s footsteps, classroom doors were locked and chairs remained upended on tables. Most of the few classes that were under way had but a handful of students.

Attendance at Chatsworth High School was 925 out of an enrollment of about 2,900. “We’ve tried to come up with . . . a school-within-a-school for the seniors,” said Principal Donna B. Smith. “It doesn’t meet all of their needs, but it is some kind of program.”

Even so, she said, many students were not staying until the end of the day.

Mel Rosen, an assistant principal at Grant High School in Van Nuys, said some classes there had as few as five students. “That’s really individualized instruction,” he said.

Attendance at Grant dropped to about 800 Wednesday, with 35 regular and substitute teachers staffing classrooms, instead of the usual 132 teachers for 3,200 students. “We’ve gotten into a routine,” said Grant Principal Robert Collins. “The school’s into a routine and the pickets are into a routine. The real action is downtown.”

In some classes at Grant, instruction was taking place and students were taking notes. A basic math class with seven students was learning about polygons. A more advanced math class that also had seven students listened as a ponytailed, fatigue-jacketed substitute teacher named Steve lectured on graphing algebraic equations.

A chemistry teacher, who asked not to be identified because she had crossed her colleagues’ picket line, plunged ahead, assigning homework, telling students who had missed classes earlier in the week what they had to do to catch up. But in some classes students listened to audiotapes, horsed around with a foam rubber ball or slept.

“This school is practically closed,” said physical education teacher Melva Heinsohn, as she walked the picket line in front of Grant and gazed in at a school nearly empty of students. “We’re so close on all of the issues, it’s too bad they can’t settle it.”