Census Data Reflects Increased Diversity : Demographics: There are more Latinos and Armenians, as well as immigrants from as far away as Laos.

Times have changed at the Cheremoya Avenue Elementary School, once the haunt of Jodie Foster and other privileged youth.

“Teaching is not too easy anymore,” said Linda Attarian, a teacher for 24 years at the school. “The kids are darling, they’re still eager, but it’s hard to keep their interest because they don’t understand. We spend a lot of time trying to get the message over.”

Half the children at the small school at the foot of the Hollywood Hills come from homes where Spanish is the primary language, and a quarter are from Armenian families.

This, as the Census makes clear, is the Hollywood of the 1990s. Its storied past little more than a tattered lure for tourists, Hollywood has become a landing zone for immigrants from as far away as Laos, the 10-year head-count found.

In the 1980s, Hollywood’s population increased by 13%, but Anglos dropped from 60% of the mix to just over half, while Latinos, many of them immigrants from Mexico and Central America, increased from 23% to 35%.

In one census tract alone, an eight-block chunk of apartments in the heart of Hollywood, the number of Latinos--1,830--more than doubled since 1980.

The tract, No. 1903.01, lies near the bars, pool halls and pawn shops of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, but it has its charm. Botanicas offer candles and floor wash with mystical properties, while icons and a yard-high bottle of Armenian brandy are on display at the Beriozka clothing store.

Gerardo Cuevas, 25, a house painter from Tijuana, has been living in the area for a year, sharing a $550-a-month, one-bedroom with two other men.

Eating an ice cream cone as he and a roommate walked back from the grocery along Franklin Avenue one evening last week, Cuevas said that occasional weekend gang violence does not bother him.

“Hollywood Boulevard has a lot of noise and vagos (vagrants), but we like it here because we found a nice place and it’s quieter,” Cuevas said.

In some respects, the 1990 Census figures understate the extent of the change in Hollywood. Many of the immigrants are non-Latino whites who, for Census purposes, are simply listed in the “Anglo” category, even if they speak barely a word of English.

One apartment building on Garfield Place, for example, has a roster of tenants that would not raise an eyebrow in Yerevan, Armenia.

Residents there complained about a “crack” house across the street, and the occasional gunfire when gang members take potshots at each other from cars, but Zograb Berberyan, 27, a truck driver who came from the Armenian capital 1 1/2 years ago, said he liked the action.

“Hollywood is an interesting place. It isn’t a dead town,” he said, having a smoke on the front porch. “And it’s just easy to live here, because there are Armenian stores on Hollywood Boulevard and a lot of Armenian people here help each other out.”

“Yes, but once they learn English they move to Glendale or Burbank or some other quiet place,” said Arutyun Takoryan, 42, an unemployed mechanic who lives in the same building. “It’s noisy here. When the bus goes by, the whole house shakes like an earthquake.”

Renters make up 80% of the population of Hollywood, the Census found, all but 10% of them paying $300 and more a month. Ten years ago, 75% of the apartments went for $300 or less.

Of the homeowners, 73% live in houses and condos going for $300,000 and up, such as the Spanish-style residences that line the winding streets north of Franklin Avenue.

These are the homes that once sent their children to Cheremoya School, but today’s 550 pupils come from the brick and stucco apartments that line the wide streets between Franklin Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard.

The number of children in Tract 1903.01 nearly doubled, to 1,282, in the past 10 years, Census data show. This is part of a 27% increase in children for all of Hollywood since 1980.

Some nearby neighborhoods have far more children than the local school can handle, and hundreds end up having to ride buses to schools in the San Fernando Valley. At Cheremoya, however, the recent implementation of a year-round calendar has expanded the school’s capacity enough to eliminate the need for busing, said Ron Steele, the principal.

Children from various backgrounds mingle for art, physical education and music programs, including an after-school samba club, but half the school is in a bilingual Spanish program, one quarter is taught in Armenian and English, and the fourth is English-only.

Ironically, the influx of Armenians threatens Cheremoya’s status as a school that enjoys extra funding because its student body is more than 70% non-white, Steele said.

“No one would argue that these limited-English Armenian kids don’t deserve additional funding, but if we get to 30%, we’d lose that money yet still have those problems,” he said.

The problems include the lack of Armenian-speaking teachers, the shortage of books and other materials in Armenian and misunderstandings between speakers of different dialects of the Armenian language.

Most children, however, tend to learn English in a year or two, teachers said, and there is even some exchange of native languages.

“The Armenian and the Spanish-speaking kids learn each other’s four-letter words real fast,” said Lee Corbin, the school’s coordinator of bilingual programs.

Hollywood: A Decade of Sweeping Changes

Hollywood saw many changes occur in the 1980s. Much of the famed entertainment capital has become the entry door into the United States for thousands of immigrants from Latin America and East Asia, while the Hollywood Hills has remained a wealthy, mostly Anglo enclave. The area’s wide socioeconomic range can be seen in Census Tract 1903.1, whose distance from its southern boundary to its northern boundary measures just a quarter of a mile. Along Franklin Avenue on its northern edge is an affluent neighborhood of single-family homes. Near Hollywood Boulevard, which marks the tract’s southern border, are run-down apartments that the immigrants call home.

Hollywood: 1990 population: 213,846, up 13% from 1980

% of overall 1990 % change since ’80 1990 population 1980 population Anglo 107,030 -6 50 60 Latino 76,183 78 36 23 Black 8,913 5 4 4 Asian 20,614 21 10 9

% of overall Anglo Latino Black Asian

Tract 1903.1: 1990 Population: 6,291, up 21% from 1980

% of overall 1990 % change since ’80 1990 population 1980 population Anglo 3,639 -1 58 71 Latino 1,830 210 29 11 Black 394 14 6 7 Asian 397 8 6 8

% of overall Anglo Latino Black Asian

Children Under 18 Hollywood: 39,409, up 27% from 1980 Tract 1903.1: 1,282, up 95% from 1980