School Was Out--but Few Knew It : Education: Unaware of a judge’s order shutting down the year-round program, students and teachers showed up for class.

Some students walked into classes at Lynwood High School Wednesday morning, others stayed out. And many just wandered about the hallways, grounds, parking lots and surrounding streets amid the confusion that marked the morning after a court order to shut down district schools.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth W. Gale had issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday afternoon to close Lynwood Unified School District’s 3-week-old year-round schools program and send 5,000 students home for the summer.

Gale said the district had failed to notify parents properly of the change from a traditional September-to-June schedule. The district adopted a year-round calendar to combat overcrowding. Such a schedule would reduce the number of students in school at any one time by about a third, officials said.

Supt. Audrey Clarke brought the judge’s order to Tuesday night’s board meeting. Board members then met in closed session with attorneys for three hours. When they emerged, downcast board President Thelma Calvin-Williams read a terse announcement saying that the district would comply with the court order but would also file an immediate appeal.

By the next morning, however, the information had not filtered down. By 7:30, students, teachers, clerks, secretaries and custodians were descending on Lynwood High from all directions, and the security guards were checking students’ identification and letting them in as usual.

“I haven’t heard anything about there not being school,” said one guard, who did not give his name. “I’m doing things the way I always do until I hear differently.”

Deborah Taylor dropped off her son, David, with misgivings. She had tried all morning to phone a hot line the district established to let parents know the status of school. “I’ve been calling all morning and the phones are just busy.”

Reactions of students ranged from sad to confused to angry.

“First you hear from the judge: All right, it’s over,” said 16-year-old senior Carlos Mendez, who attended the court hearing. “Then you hear from the guards: ‘If you go into school you stay in.’ ”

“The students are all walking around,” 17-year-old Susy Flores said. “Nobody’s in class. They can’t hold anybody.”

Moments later, attorney Robert Sammis arrived with a walkie-talkie. “We’re trying to get this thing shut down,” he said, adding that the district wanted to keep track of children sent to school until they could be returned home safely.

The scene was no less chaotic at nearby Lindbergh Elementary School, one of five district schools that switched to year-round operation July 1.

“Hay escuela hoy; there is school today,” office workers told parents, who then dropped off their children. In the front yard, 20 feet away, a kindergarten teacher was sending children home with their parents.

Responses from parents were mixed.

“I wish to have my little girl continue,” parent Bernabe Cedillos said as his 5-year-old walked beside him back home. “I don’t really know what they’re doing. We need somebody to explain what’s going on.”

Claudia Centeno, 18, who had taken her 4-year-old sister to school, was leading her back home again. “It’s weird. Everybody’s all confused,” said Centeno, who supported the court decision because she said too many siblings and friends were placed on different schedules.

Parent Lisa Martin said one of her children likes year-round and the other doesn’t. She favors the shutdown, because “I want school to go back to the way it’s supposed to be.”

In front of school, kindergartner Alejandro Marquez was crying. His parents had dropped him off, and he was afraid he’d be left alone. A teacher took him in tow.

Black-haired kindergartner Fatima Ramos gave teacher Tammy Baragona a hug goodby and a red rose.

“I don’t have anything but positive things to say about year-round schools,” Baragona said. “The cafeteria is less crowded. The office is less crowded. The classes are less crowded and the playground is less crowded.” Baragona said she had no idea how teachers’ work schedules, pay or vacation would be affected.

Closing the schools would cost the district about $1 million a week, Supt. Clarke said recently. About half of that loss, she said, is employee salaries. The rest is money that the state will withhold because schools are funded based on average daily attendance.

District officials also worry that an end to year-round schools will hurt Lynwood’s chances of getting state money to construct new schools. Districts on a year-round schedule are far more likely to receive state school-construction funds, officials said.

Judge Gale was not sympathetic to the district’s plight. “Any loss they suffer is the consequence of their own actions and their own arrogance,” Gale told a crowded courtroom Tuesday afternoon.

Gale dismissed the district’s contention that it had complied with laws requiring the district to publish three notices, in successive weeks, of its intent to go year-round. The notices had to be published by Nov. 1, 1990. The district’s final notice came out Nov. 7.

In addition, the wording of the notice was ambiguous, and did not clearly inform parents that the year-round schools would be mandatory, Gale ruled.

Gale said the issue was more than just a technicality, because parents who wished to fight the board’s decision only had until the following Dec. 10 to gather enough signatures to qualify a ballot referendum.

Parent Selma Rouzan said the district had misrepresented year-round education from the beginning, telling parents they had no choice in the matter.

A grass-roots parents group, Parents Interested in Education, had filed the lawsuit. Its leaders paid for their attorney by selling homemade tacos and baked goods and by having garage sales. Last weekend’s garage sale earned $220, organizer Lucy Hernandez said.

“We were lucky,” Hernandez added. “We got a good judge and an honest judge. He didn’t go by the budget figures. He went by the law.”

The district asked that the judge require the parents to post a bond for the district’s probable losses. Judge Gale set the bond at $10, saying that a large bond would be a hardship. Gale also chided the district for repeating its mistakes. He noted that the courts also struck down a 1981 attempt to start year-round schools in Lynwood because parents were not properly notified.

Many of the more than 100 parents and students in the courtroom cheered as Gale announced his decision. Close to 200 more waited outside for word.

Maria Cuevas, 17, said she approved of the ruling because the year-round schedule made too little of a difference in her classes. “I still have 52 people in my calculus class, 50 people in my physics class and 45 people in a government class, with no windows and no air-conditioning,” she said.

Lynwood High teacher Sondra Sibley said the parents’ lawsuit just delays any solution to the overcrowding. “Parents and students complained about the long lunch lines and other problems for years, and so did I,” she said. “What is their plan? How do they intend to alleviate overcrowding?”

(Southeast Edition) NEXT STEP

The Lynwood Unified School District is expected to appeal the court order. If the state Court of Appeal sides with the district, school could reopen as early as today. But the appeals court is under no obligation to decide the case immediately. Pending the results of an appeal, district schools will remain closed. The district must also decide how teacher salaries will be affected. That issue is complicated by a teachers-district salary dispute over pay for both last year and the coming year.