Day Off for Many Is a Hot 1st Day of School for Others : Education: Year-round schedules bring 160,000 students back to classroom. The low attendance was no surprise, especially at facilities that lack air conditioning.

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, especially in the San Fernando Valley.

Although many of the 163 schools reported low attendance, most school officials blamed that more on the usual back-to-school reluctance than the heat, the holiday or the new schedule.

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

At Pacoima Junior High School, 903 students showed up--350 fewer than expected--but Principal Maria Wale called it “a pretty decent showing” for the first day of a term.

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

School originally was slated to begin on Monday of next week, but school officials were forced to start the new semester on Friday to add one day to the term, so that students could have a spring break and still meet the state-required minimum of 180 days of instruction.

The change complicated the already difficult process of creating four separate schedules for one-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 anytime,” 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, especially in the San Fernando Valley where many classrooms are not air-conditioned, complained of the heat.

Temperatures reached the high 90s.

“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.”

The heat is terrible, said Leonard George, principal of Maclay Junior High School, also in Pacoima.

But his school has been promised air conditioning by 1992, he said.

“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 other than the heat, 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 magnet student at Pacoima Junior High. “I think it’s better.”

Rosa Padilla, whose sons attend Noble Street Elementary 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,” Noble Principal Ruth Jackson said.

But there were a few critics.

“I don’t like it very much,” said Ronnell Lee, a sixth-grader at Noble Street. “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.