Vacation’s Over for County’s Students : Education: Those enrolled in nine of the 20 districts are scheduled to be back in class today while others will get a brief reprieve.

The first wave of Ventura County students head back to school today, marking the end of summer vacation for more than 100,000 schoolchildren.

Students at nine of the county’s 20 districts, including Ventura Unified and Ojai Unified, will trade their beach gear for schoolbooks.

For some districts, including Simi Valley, Santa Paula, Moorpark, Hueneme, Pleasant Valley in Camarillo and Ocean View in Oxnard, Wednesday will be the first day back.

But some county children will get a brief reprieve. Thousand Oaks’ Conejo Valley Unified School District starts Thursday, while the Oak Park and Oxnard Union High School students start back next Monday.

In Oxnard, school board members voted last spring to delay the start of the school year until Sept. 10 to allow teachers and other district employees to take a series of workshops that normally would be scattered throughout the school year.

In most districts, teachers have already spent several hours a day at their schools on their own time, preparing lesson plans and readying classrooms. Many districts also had staff meetings last week, which served both as pep rallies and goal-setting sessions for the coming year.

County Supt. of Schools James F. Cowan said aides for county-run special education programs met last week to prepare for the new year.

“We’re looking forward to it,” said Cowan, whose staff members coordinate their schedules with those of the county districts.

For another 15,000 students, however, today is just another school day.

Those students are on year-round schedules in three districts, including Fillmore Unified, where the entire district converted to a year-round calendar last month, and Ventura Unified, which has year-round programs at three schools.

Students at those schools have been in class since the beginning of August and are already approaching their first vacation break, scheduled for the first two weeks in October.

And while one-fourth of the Oxnard Elementary School District’s 12,000 students also started classes today, the remainder have been in school on several different schedules. Oxnard, the only district in the county that adopted the year-round schedule to reduce crowding, has schoolchildren on three different calendars.

Statewide, school districts are beginning the year with fiscal uncertainty, as state education officials prepare for a possible legal battle with Gov. George Deukmejian’s office over public school funding.

Although money problems have been more austere this year than others, they are nothing new, Cowan said.

“We’re always in the struggle for money,” Cowan said. “But we’re optimistic. We’re getting things geared up and getting ready for a good year.”