Extra Help for Elementary Pupils Urged : Education: The head of the NEA calls for a $2.2-billion program that would offer intensive training for students in need of added attention.

The head of the National Education Assn. on Thursday called for a $2.2-billion program that would offer an intensive session to prepare elementary students in need of extra attention.

Keith Geiger proposed Operation Jump Start during the opening session of the NEA’s annual meeting, explaining that the program would be an “all-out, full-alert effort to give every elementary child who needs it an educational booster shot.”

About one-third of the nation’s 26 million elementary students would be involved, he said.

In his first address as president to the union’s policy-making body of about 8,100 delegates, Geiger asked the federal government to provide half of the estimated $2.2 billion needed for Operation Jump Start. States and local school districts would pick up the rest.

At a news conference, Geiger said that those identified for Operation Jump Start would be given a two-week head start on the school year, in classes limited to 15 students. The teachers would be those the students will have during the regular school year, Geiger said.

Also at the meeting, the nation’s largest teachers union said that public schools should offer day care, meals and health screening for preschool, kindergarten and elementary pupils.

The NEA board of directors approved a committee report that said public schools should be the primary provider of such early childhood services. It said that they should be universal, with low or no cost to the child, and that all children would have equal access.

With the exception of Head Start, most day care or preschool programs are offered by private or nonprofit organizations. Head Start provides education, meals and health screening for needy youngsters ages 3 to 5, but officials said only a small percentage of eligible children are served by the program.

The report did not contain an estimate of the cost of implementing its recommendations.

The committee said that its recommendations were prompted, in part, by changes in American families and the labor force. It also cited changes in the demographics of poverty, increases in the preschool population and its changing ethnic composition.

NEA statistics showed that between 1960 and 1985, the percentage of traditional households--mother, father, two school-age children--decreased from 60% to 7%.

It said also that more than 3.2 million mothers work outside the home, and 200,000 more mothers join the labor force yearly. By 1995, it is estimated that 80% of children under age 6 will have mothers working outside the home.