Traffic Makes Students Late on 1st Day of Year-Round School : Oak View: Closure of the Ventura Freeway engorges lanes on California 33. School buses are delayed.

On the first day of year-round school Monday at Arnaz Elementary, Sharon Lerma dropped her two daughters off at a bus stop in Casitas Springs and drove to the Oak View school to await their arrival.

But when the school bell rang at 8:10 a.m., Lerma was standing in front of the school, and her daughters were nowhere in sight.

“They’ve never ridden a bus to school before, and I wanted to meet them here,” Lerma said. “But it looks like they got caught up in all the mess.”

The bus transporting Michelle, 7, Tamarind, 9, and other Arnaz students finally arrived about half an hour late, after being stuck on California 33 in the bumper-to-bumper traffic that resulted from the rerouting of cars around the Seacliff train derailment.

Traffic problems also caused delays of up to two hours Monday for Oak View-area children who are bused to De Anza Middle School in Ventura, Principal David Myers said.

Diane Lee, co-owner of the Rancho Arnaz Apple Cider Barn, said one boy waited for a bus for an hour in front of her store on California 33. “I called his mom, and she finally picked him up and took him to school,” Lee said.

At De Anza, two teachers who live in Santa Barbara were not able to make it to school because a 10-mile stretch of the Ventura Freeway was closed, Myers said.

But the traffic jam did not delay the start of the school day for Oak View students who walked to neighborhood schools or who were driven to school by parents for the first day, said Richard Kirby, principal at both Oak View and Arnaz schools.

The Ventura Unified School District also started year-round classes at E.P. Foster, Mound and Sheridan Way elementary schools. This is the first year on the year-round schedule for Arnaz, Oak View and De Anza. Countywide, school districts increasingly are switching to the non-traditional schedule to use schools more fully and reduce learning loss over the long summer vacation.

Students on Ventura’s year-round schedule get two weeks off in October, a three-week Christmas break and a three-week spring vacation. Next year’s six-week summer vacation begins June 11.

But starting the new school year in July, just six weeks after the last school year ended, got mixed reviews from some students in teacher Charline Norton’s fifth-grade class at Arnaz.

“It feels weird,” said Chelsea Manley, 10. “It feels like we just got out of school.”

“I don’t really like it,” said Heather Hanes, 9. “When we’re going to regular school, other kids are still going to summer school. Their regular school doesn’t start until September.”

However, Crystal Adams, 9, saw a positive side to the new calendar.

‘You have a longer time to spend with your family,” Crystal said of the extended spring and Christmas breaks. “And my birthday is in October, so I get to celebrate it at home.”

About 18,000 students, or 16% of those in public schools in Ventura County, are on year-round schedules. Students on the Fillmore Unified School District’s year-round schedule begin classes Wednesday. And about three-fourths of the students in the Oxnard district’s elementary schools return Aug. 6.

Some Oak View parents are concerned about whether it will get too hot for school during August, PTA president Laura Imbrogno said. Fans have been installed at Arnaz School and in some classrooms at Oak View. The temperature reached about 90 degrees Monday.

And in some cases, the year-round calendar conflicts with family vacation schedules, parents said.

But one of the students’ biggest concerns was that, while they were heading to school, children from neighboring Ojai still have more than a month of vacation left.

Arnaz parent Vicki Hampton said her two children “feel kind of cheated right now because we have some neighbors who attend Ojai schools, and this morning they said, ‘Bye, we’re going to the beach.’ ”

But come October break, Hampton said, “they’ll feel better.”

Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this story.