Dog Days of School : Education: Sixth-graders beginning a year-round program in Sylmar complain of the heat and long to be outside. Parents agree class in summer isn’t a hot idea.

Summer in Sylmar used to stand for swimming, not science. Recreation, not reading. Adding friends, not numbers.

In the secluded world of Room 22--sixth grade at Sylmar School--summer has new symbols: Al Diaz’s sweat drenching his papers; classmate Cameron Duty sticking his tiny frame in front of a huge fan, and teacher Ann Howitt, face flushed from the 100-degree temperatures, breathing heavily between subjects.

Year-round school, barely a month old, hasn’t won any converts here. The kids miss their neighborhood friends, and Nintendo sets. The teacher goes slower with lesson plans. The parents complain children are tougher than ever to handle.

Everyone blames the heat.

“It’s not working at all,” said Jacob Bailey, 11. “They said we were going to learn more, but we’re not, especially when we’re so hot.”

Howitt’s youngsters began school at 7:50 a.m. July 6, just a few weeks after finishing fifth grade. They immediately occupied a room in one of the school’s long, rectangular bungalows, set apart from the main building. It’s also isolated from the school’s most popular resource these days--air conditioning. Howitt would have to get by with one fan; a second finally arrived in late July.

So she developed her own counterattack against the heat. She began serving ice cream and water, and helped students chart each hour’s temperatures on the bulletin board--92 at 10:15 a.m., 96 at 12:20 p.m., and higher. Students waited anxiously for their turn at the water, drinking slowly to savor it as long as possible.

And Howitt recognized the value of psychology.

“I try to reinforce that there’s a field trip coming or a vacation coming,” Howitt said. “I want to do anything that can get us to move through all this more pleasantly.”

Call it a limited success. Although complaints have declined, and students are behaving and doing assignments on time, Howitt believes they haven’t mentally accepted the concept of school in summer. “We may say this is an academic year,” Howitt said, “but it feels like summer school.”

Howitt is proceeding at a slower pace than previous years. Without slighting the intelligence of her latest crop of 11-year-olds, compared to earlier classes, she has discovered new academic boundaries.

Normally, it would probably take about 20 minutes to read six pages of literature; now, Howitt said, it takes at least 35. Also, she assigns 20 or 25 math problems, instead of an entire textbook page of about 35 problems.

“I can’t hold their attention as long,” she said. “They can work at a task for 20 to 30 minutes, and they should be able to do 40 to 50 minutes, so I have to give them a lot of smaller tasks.

“I can’t push them as hard as I would want, and it’s not just because of the heat, which is a big factor. Without the summer off, the readers haven’t had a summer of reading books; their vocabulary isn’t as broad.”

She points to a student from Thailand, who had little English background entering America. “She could really have used a summer to develop language skills.”

The students aren’t the only ones affected by the short break. “I can’t go as fast,” she said. “I get exhausted. I didn’t get any rest, either.”

On the other hand, by not having time to naturally mature into sixth-graders, her students haven’t developed the distractions that accompany that age change. “When they’re younger, they’re more eager to please the teacher,” she said, “but as they get into sixth grade, the social scene becomes more important than the academic scene, and their hormones go bananas. That hasn’t happened yet. They’re not controlled by peer pressures yet.”

However, they plead no contest to other distractions. Room 22, at the end of the bungalow, has a view of a house across the street; several horses graze on the grounds. Besides, there’s heavy traffic down the street, which can occupy the students’ minds.

“It’s kind of hard to concentrate when you see other kids walking by and playing,” said Greg Bearden, 11. “Last week, somebody yelled out for a kid in the class.”

Still, Howitt’s 13 boys, 9 girls have behaved extremely well, she said. Slowly, as is typical among sixth-graders, personalities have begun to emerge: Jacob, the class president, makes sure everyone is in line; Mike Alpuche, who is obedient in class, is aggressive on the playing field during recess; and Cameron, who is polite, always checks to make sure he is doing it right.

At first, Howitt’s students thought somebody had pulled a huge practical joke on them. School in the summer? No way. When asked about year-round schools, none of the students voiced approval.

“They’re mad,” said Monica Gonzalez, 11, during the second day of school. “Who goes to the school when it’s this hot?”

Polled again three weeks later, their tone had not mellowed.

“I could be anywhere else right now,” said Mike, 11. “I could be swimming, at the beach, at my aunt’s home. My mom probably likes me being here cause I’m not home to bug her. I’d want her to take me places instead of being bored at home.”

But parents say they’re not pleased with the current situation. On principle, they accept the practical need to convert to year-round schools. They claim the transition has been woefully managed.

“If they had air conditioning in the room, I could live with it,” said Julie Bearden, whose 11-year-old son, Greg, is one of Howitt’s students. “He comes home every day and is sick to his stomach. He’s hot and tired all the time, and doesn’t want to do anything.”

Bearden and other parents argue the school should have a nurse on duty full time; Principal Irene Smerigan said that because of district policy, Sylmar School can only have a nurse one day a week. “Someone could collapse out there,” Bearden said.

Cameron’s mother, Candy, has a suggestion. “I think the school board should come in here and sit in these offices. They have air-conditioned offices and air-conditioned limos.”

Parents, as they have since the year-round school movement first gained attention, complain they’ve had to reorganize vacation schedules. Howitt said some defy the new system, and stick to their original plans. “They don’t change their behavior to suit the school,” she said. “They just take their kid for a couple of weeks.”

Howitt, 50, has taught elementary school for 16 years, the last five in Sylmar. Normally, her summer is spent taking classes and fixing her Northridge home. “When you’ve taught for nine months,” she said, “you need a summer vacation because you are always on. You never leave them.” Howitt said taking classes allows her to qualify for the maximum teacher salary, “and this will set that back a little.”

Still, she remains optimistic that eventually she and her students will warm up to the routine of year-round education.

“I like the thought of two smaller breaks,” said Howitt, whose class will get its first recess Sept. 28, returning to school Nov. 13. “And kids learn how to adapt, too. You have to look at the positives.”

Furthermore, Howitt said, the smaller class size--she usually teaches 27 or 28 students--allows her to devote more time to each youngster. “I can give them more attention, and I have less papers to grade, and that’s better.”

Smerigan said it’s too early to make a comprehensive analysis. “It’s still the honeymoon period,” she said. “You don’t know the limits and boundaries. Let’s see how the year progresses.”

Howitt’s students, however, don’t anticipate a sudden change of mood. They don’t see the October break--they also get off between March 29 and May 15--as a nice consolation prize.

“It’ll be colder outside and we won’t be able to do anything,” said Mike. “It’ll be raining, and our parents won’t let us go outside. In summer, we could do anything we want, all the things we’ve been waiting all year to do. We’ve been waiting all year for the pool to open.”

Mike went back to work, finishing the addition problems for Howitt. Al continued the assignment as well, counting his numbers and watching his sweat.

The fan blew some air around the room, but the heat remained oppressive.

It is a new summer in Sylmar.