Students Feel Class Crunch : Education: Thousands crowded out of four-year schools seek to enroll in summer school. Many are likely to be turned away.

When a Los Angeles Valley College spokeswoman got to work at 7 a.m. one recent day, she encountered 700 or so students, many of whom had camped outside the administration building the night before to get first crack at summer school classes.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Shannon Stack said. “Here we all were, just waiting for the doors to open. We’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Such scenes have been common this summer at community colleges throughout Los Angeles, as thousands of students crowded out of the University of California and California State University have tried to enroll in summer school.

But instead of the wide-open classes common in the past, they are finding that the space crunch induced by budget cuts at the four-year colleges and universities has spread to the two-year schools. Administrators say the chance of even getting on a waiting list is slim, and growing slimmer each day.

Donald Phelps, chancellor of the Los Angeles Community College District, said he’s heard plenty of horror stories about students who have waited for hours only to be told that all classes were full.

“I would be surprised if we didn’t turn away substantial numbers of students at all nine Los Angeles (district) colleges,” Phelps said.

At Valley College, for example, 300 students tried to get into a biology course that had space for just 40, Phelps said. Valley has 115 classes on its summer schedule and more than 5,000 students already have applied for 2,400 openings in its summer term classes beginning Monday.

Last Thursday, the first day of registration, 1,500 students signed up, Stack said.

“It was an absolutely incredible day--a record,” Stack said. “This week, there will be a couple more days like that.”

Virtually all English, math, science and other core curriculum classes needed to meet general education requirements have long been filled, even though summer classes at three campuses don’t begin until next week, said Jerome Bowens, a district fiscal analyst.

Waiting lists are also closed in many cases, said Bowens and administrators at the various schools. Figures on how many students are being turned away won’t be available until next week at the earliest. But Bowens said East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park and Los Angeles City College in Hollywood have been particularly hard hit.

At Los Angeles City College, 2,379 students are on waiting lists for the 164 classes that started Monday, hoping others will drop out by the Thursday registration cutoff, college spokesman Fred Piegonski said. Although just 60 classes are being offered at West Los Angeles College, he said, 540 students are on standby.

Many of the schools cut off registration early, because the classes and waiting lists were full “and it just wasn’t fair to allow them to keep trying,” said Ina Geller, a spokeswoman for Mission College in Sylmar and Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

By the end of last week, more than 2,600 students were seeking to enroll at Mission in classes that could accommodate only 1,600, Geller said.

The lines of students trying to enter summer classes at the beginning of the registration period were somewhat shorter this week at Pierce. But that’s only because the school has spread the word that unless students already have secured classes, or their names are high on a waiting list, they may as well forget it, said William Norlund, vice president of academic affairs.

Chancellor Phelps said the situation is far worse than in past years, and that the picture will only grow grimmer in the fall, given the state’s worsening budget problems and the likelihood of further spending cuts.

“I would say that once these classes fill up, there are not going to be the resources to add sections,” Phelps said. “That means classes that are full are full.”

Incoming freshmen trying to get a jump on the fall term are most likely to be the ones who end up without classes because current students are often given first shot at enrolling. That means that many non-traditional students who had counted on the community college system--including those returning to school after years of work and immigrants new to the country--will be turned away, Phelps said.