BACK TO SCHOOL : ANAHEIM : For Certain Lucky Students, Summer Vacation Just Began

Marching back from an all-day field trip to the Anaheim Museum on their last day of school, hot and sweaty fourth-graders from Abraham Lincoln Elementary School giggled and swapped dreams about how they would spend the coming vacation.

“When I get home, I’m going to get in the tub and cool off!” said Jacqueline Vu, 8. “I walk to school and home. When I get home, it’s like . . . blehhh!”

Vu summed up what kids in the class said they hated most about going to school during the summer: the weather.

Six schools in the Anaheim City School District, the city’s largest district with 21 schools, started year-round classes for the first time this summer. On Friday, some finished doing summer duty, and the consensus was that the plan passed with flying colors.

“It’s almost exceeding our expectations, just having it function and having people accept it,” said Elizabeth Schuck, district coordinator of the program, which, in a few years, will involve the entire district.

The year-round classes are “going great,” said Ruth Sorensen, principal at Abraham Lincoln. “I think we have a bunch of believers.”

At the outset, some in the district were skeptical about parents and students catching on to the rotating schedule that gives students 12 weeks of school and then four weeks off throughout the year.

Under the year-round program, the district will be able to handle its growing elementary-school population by teaching about 33% more students annually. At Abraham Lincoln, the program’s success wasn’t drastic, but enrollment was still up. About 830 students attended during the summer, 100 or so more than the school regularly handles. Previously, those extra 100 students would have been bused to less crowded schools.

Teacher Anna Marie Greene, buying ice cream bars for her exhausted fourth-graders, said she watched students continue to learn during the summer instead of tuning out and forgetting the previous year’s work.

She also said that teaching during the summer--and under the new year-round schedule--has its advantages for teachers like her. She is working on her master’s degree, and now she has four weeks off at key times during the university calendar--September, January and May--when she can complete her courses.

Miriam Hernandez said she would definitely be “going swimming” on Tuesday when some of her friends are heading back to school. She noted the delight of an 8-year-old just realizing she has one up on her friends: “Now I’m going on vacation, and they’re going to school.”