Educators Reeling From Changes in Enrollment : Schools: ‘The disorganization is horrendous,’ one teacher comments, two months into the school year.

The week began routinely enough at Arlington Heights Elementary School.

Parents streamed into the auditorium for the annual back-to-school night Tuesday, meeting their children’s teachers and hearing glowing predictions of what lies ahead.

But unbeknown to either parents or children, a decision had already been made Monday to shift 75 children into new classes--a new room, a new teacher, and new classmates--two months into the school year. Parents did not learn about the changes until Wednesday, when youngsters brought notes home in their backpacks.

“The disorganization is horrendous here,” said sixth-grade teacher Lisa Jackson. “Teachers were not consulted about the individual needs of children before the shifts. We were told not to say anything to anyone. And now we have crying kids and irate parents.”

Principal Mona Kantor explained that her headache began when a district personnel specialist informed her that she had one too many teachers for her school’s enrollment. The ax fell on a newly hired fourth-grade teacher, displacing 28 youngsters. Their reassignments bumped still other children, and in some cases required her to combine students from two grades in a single classroom.

Although school district officials say these kinds of disruptions have been minimal this year, students and teachers at many Westside schools are still being shuffled, despite that school started nearly two months ago, and that final enrollment figures were due Sept. 20.

Pacific Palisades Elementary, for example, had received only 18 new bused-in students by “norm day” last month, the day on which enrollments were supposed to be final. Now principal Terri Arnold said she has been told to expect another 88 new arrivals.

“They are dribbling in each day,” she said, adding that it’s a good thing her school plan is flexible.

At Mark Twain Junior High in Mar Vista, one ESL class has gone through eight substitute teachers so far this year. Principal Nathaniel Siskel said he has had to make some hard decisions about juggling teachers, to cope with temporary staffing shortages caused in part by teacher illnesses.

Adjustments--and sometimes massive reorganizations--take place each year after the norm day tallies are in, and many teachers say they postpone embarking on ambitious school projects until the shuffling is complete.

“Norm day is the button that tells you you’ve got to redo everything,” explained Helen Bernstein, president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers’ union. Teacher allocations are based on the number of students enrolled in a school on norm day, traditionally set in the fourth or fifth week of the school year to allow for latecomers.

Some schools hold onto students beyond the cutoff date to avoid losing teachers and bilingual funds, educators privately concede, then later bus them elsewhere. Some dump problem students. Other unexpected youngsters are bona fide new arrivals to Los Angeles from other parts of the world.

There is no date after which classes are stable and protected from disruption, because new students enroll all year.

“New students are coming in a few each day,” said Mar Vista Elementary Principal Monica Friedman. Although the school lost no teachers, it revamped its plans only days before the start of school in August, when the school district decreed there must be larger class sizes for all Los Angeles students.

“We will try to hold everything as is, until the numbers escalate,” she said.

“It may not happen for another week, or maybe this whole semester, we just don’t know. But chances are we will have to reorganize again.”

Union president Bernstein assesses the level of chaos in the schools this year as “worse than usual,” compounded by budget cuts that resulted in increases in class size and massive teacher layoffs.

Allowing teachers and counselors to participate in planning could remedy half the problems, she said. She suggested busing groups of students--for example, a whole third grade--rather than individual children. And she also recommended establishing a cutoff date after which parents could only enroll their children in the next year-round cycle, or setting aside a class or school for late enrollees.

Individual schools report a wide variation in fallout from norm day. But some measure of the widespread confusion and uncertainty can be inferred from the fact that school district officials say they still don’t know how many students are enrolled, how many have registered between the start of the school year and norm day, or how many teachers have been or will be reassigned.

They point out that last Friday was norm day for one set of students on the year-round schedule, and that final numbers from the Sept. 20 norm day are still not in.

“We’re still counting,” said Mark Shrager, director of budget services for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“We projected a total of 645,452, about 20,000 more than last year. I know we’ve grown by more than 10,000, so I feel we will come pretty close.”

“Only a handful of teachers--probably not more than 20 or 30 districtwide”--are being reassigned in the wake of norm day, said Michael Bordie, director of certificated placements. He noted that the district started releasing teachers as early as last June, and that schools had been told there could not be more than one teacher over the number justified by their enrollment by the time Sept. 20 rolled around. As a result, he said, the overall district actually has too few teachers.

The political climate--another $122 million in school budget cuts is to be implemented Nov. 1 and there is talk of a possible teachers’ strike--may partially explain the polarity of opinions as to how Los Angeles schools are faring.

But school board member Mark Slavkin, who represents most of the Westside, said the fallout from norm day 1991 is minimal compared with the chaos of last year.

“My impression is that things are much better organized and coordinated this year. . . . By norm day, schools pretty well knew if they had to cut teachers and shuffle kids, and the adjustments were much smoother. This is not to say that the class-size increase hasn’t been disastrous, but the magnitude of disruption otherwise is less than in the past.”

However, Slavkin said, even good planning is no match for the unpredictable events. “Kids don’t all show up by Sept. 20. They arrive from all over the country and the world. You can’t say, ‘Why didn’t you know there’d be unrest in Guatemala?’ ”

And, although disruptive, the breaking up of classes happens, he said.

“That’s the reality of this city. It’s never locked in. Norm day is basically for the purpose of ensuring that schools have the number of teachers earned by their enrollments.

“We can’t in good faith promise no other changes or disruptions. The circumstances are, as they say, beyond our control.”