It’s Hot, It’s July, and for Kids, Time to Go to School : Education: Many campuses begin year-round schedules. Although many report low attendance, officials say that is typical for the first day of classes.

Never mind that Friday was hot and muggy and it was the middle of a long holiday weekend.

A new semester began for 160,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, many of whom were starting year-round schedules for the first time.

Although many schools reported low attendance, most school officials said that was to be expected.

“On the first day of school, we never expect all the kids to show up,” said Margaret Hall, office manager at Cienega Elementary School.

“I think we had a pretty decent showing,” said Maria Wale, principal of Pacoima Junior High School, where 903 of the 1,253 students expected showed up for class.

District officials will not get attendance reports until next week, but said absences are always high on the first day of any classes--and will probably be higher than normal this semester because of the unusual Friday start on the day after the Fourth of July.

School originally was slated to begin on Monday, but school officials were forced to start the new semester on Friday so that students could have both a spring break and the state-required 180 days of instruction.

The change complicated the already difficult process of creating four separate schedules for a third of the district’s schools, said Joyce Peyton, head of the district office overseeing multitrack schools.

“This is not the way we’d like to do it, but we had no choice,” Peyton said.

A spot check of schools revealed few problems.

“It’s been like the first day of school any time,” said Tom Hunter, assistant principal at San Fernando Junior High School, where about 950 of the anticipated 1,500 students showed up for class. “This is always the way it is.”

Students, teachers and administrators complained of the heat, especially in the San Fernando Valley, where many classrooms are not air conditioned.

“It’s very hot,” said Ben Bishop, 15, a student in the math-computer science magnet program at Pacoima Junior High School. “You sweat in your classroom.”

Leonard George, principal at Maclay Junior High School, also in Pacoima, said his school has been promised air conditioning by 1992. “It’s terrible,” he said of the heat.

“You can’t think because it’s so hot,” said Ray Torres, 14, a ninth-grader at San Fernando Junior High School.

Many teachers brought their own fans and even turned off lights in their classrooms in an effort to cool things off.

But the heat aside, most parents and students interviewed had little criticism of the new year-round schedules.

“I like it,” said Mary Torres, Ray’s mother. “This way the kids have something to do and won’t be out on the streets.”

“You don’t forget as much between semesters,” said Trevor Menagh, 14, also a math-computer science student at Pacoima Junior High. “I think it’s better.”

Rosa Padilla, whose sons attend Noble Street School in Sepulveda, said she also approves of the new schedule. “This way we can go on vacation when there aren’t so many people.”

“I really think the children like to be in school,” said Noble Principal Ruth Jackson.

But there were a few critics. “I don’t like it very much,” said Ronnell Lee, a sixth-grader at Noble Street Elementary School. “I’d like to have more vacation.”

By August, all of the district’s students will be on a year-round calendar, Peyton said.

Times education writer Sandy Banks contributed to this story.