An Island of Learning : Education: The one-room schoolhouse at Two Harbors is unique in the county. But the old-fashioned setup has many modern amenities to keep students in seven grade levels busy.

The one-room school in the Catalina town of Two Harbors is having its biggest academic year ever: On opening day, a record 19 students showed up for class.

It is the only one-room school in Los Angeles County, and, in some ways, seems to be from another time, another America. There is the rural setting, the schoolhouse’s red exterior, the brass bell atop the roof and a learning environment in which older students help teach younger ones.

But the K-6 school is by no means old-fashioned. In fact, it opened only five years ago--so youngsters in Two Harbors, a resort town of 200, would not have to take the dusty, hour-and-a-half bus ride to crowded Avalon to study. The classroom has two computers and a television, and it will soon have an electronic library complete with an encyclopedia on compact disc.

“I think it’s great,” said Martha Carman, whose daughter, Kimberly, 9, is in the fourth grade at Two Harbors School. “They get a superior education, and the environment is so good over here.”

Until 1987, all of Two Harbors’ students had to travel by boat or bus to Avalon to school. Boat transportation was used early on but later abandoned out of concern for students’ safety. The bus trip took 1 1/2 hours each way, and students were away from home from 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day.

Parents of young children were not happy with the arrangement. But the Long Beach Unified School District, which operates schools on Santa Catalina Island, did not have the money to build a small school in Two Harbors.

Then the late Cliff Tucker, a Long Beach businessman and yachtsman, sailed into Two Harbors with an offer no one could refuse.

Tucker, who had been sailing to Catalina for decades, had a special feeling for Two Harbors and the families that run the resort facilities there.

First, he donated a barge-load of playground equipment. Then, in 1986, he negotiated with the Long Beach school district for permission to build the one-room school. As part of the deal, a special Two Harbors School Foundation was set up to help raise operating money for the school, said Principal Mark Ur, who is in charge of all schools on Santa Catalina Island.

The 24-by-40-foot portable classroom cost $90,000. Kindergarten through fourth grade classes started there in 1987, and a fifth grade was added the next year. The school district paid most of the operating costs, but parents and other yachtsmen donated equipment and money to the school foundation to make ends meet.

The decision to add a sixth grade was made at the last moment this fall because, with enrollment up in Avalon, there was not enough room for sixth-graders from Two Harbors, Ur said. Sixth-graders will still be sent to Avalon on a limited basis, however.

“We’ll be bringing them in (to Avalon) on the bus one day a week, Thursdays, so they can go to computer lab, have library time and physical ed,” he said.

Teaching seven grade levels in a single classroom is not easy. Lindsey Mattingly, the only teacher at Two Harbors, says the key is keeping youngsters busy working in groups while she concentrates on one group at a time.

Her strategy was in full swing one recent morning. After the students had trooped in from recess, left their shoes in the entry-way and taken their seats, Mattingly gave out assignments.

“OK now, kindergarten and first-graders, I want you to work together on patterns,” she said. Pairing them up, she sent them to one corner of the room to work with colored puzzle blocks, creating and copying geometric patterns.

The second-, third- and fourth-graders--only four students in all--were sent to work in pairs on spelling and word patterns, taking turns drilling each other.

Mattingly sat with the sixth-graders, introducing them to a new social studies text. The subjects of the day were archeology and anthropology, from 6,500 BC to the time of Attila the Hun, AD 406-453.

Mattingly jumped at the chance to take part in such schooling when the Two Harbors teaching job opened this year. She and her husband, an operator of heavy equipment, rented a house and moved to the island.

“I’d been teaching in an inner-city school for several years, and I was ready for a change,” she said of her previous teaching job in Long Beach. And, she added, she knew what to expect. In 1975, she taught in a one-room school on Ibiza, a popular Spanish resort island.

“I’ve remembered that experience fondly and have wanted to get back to this kind of teaching,” she said. “It’s really like a big family.”