Classes Resume at 200 Schools; Teachers Study Contract Offer

Reminders of the Northridge earthquake were not hard to find Monday as classes resumed at about 200 campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

At Cleveland High School in Reseda, students snaked their way through four lines to buy lunch outside the cafeteria, still closed by quake damage. At Fulton Middle School in Van Nuys, teachers met in daylong planning sessions in classrooms with missing ceiling tiles and patched walls.

At Reseda High School, students took a dance class outside on the asphalt near the empty, quake-damaged gymnasium.

“We’re doing the best we can,” said Bob Kladifko, the principal at Reseda High, where the gym, auditorium and a 10-classroom building remain closed. “We’re just trying to keep an optimistic outlook.”

While new students searched for classrooms and familiar faces, teachers throughout the district held lunchtime and after-school meetings Monday to learn more about their new contract offer. About 28,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles are eligible to vote today and Wednesday on whether to accept the school district’s 8% pay restoration or to authorize a strike.

Union leaders have recommended that teachers accept the contract offer, which is intended to restore most of the 10% pay cut that teachers accepted two years ago. Union leaders predicted that the district will be spared a strike; results of the vote will be made public Thursday evening.

“People are not jumping for joy, but they’re happier than they were two years ago,” said Catherine Carey, the union spokeswoman.

Said Allie Landers, the union representative at Carver Middle School in South-Central Los Angeles: “For the most part, I think teachers agreed this is the best we can get right now. They are reluctant to accept anything less than 10%, but a strike is not what we want at this time either.”

But some campus union leaders said the offer was a hard sell to their colleagues.

“We knew we had to compromise, but teachers are not 100% or even 80% enthusiastic about accepting it,” said Lannie Foster, a teacher and union representative at Jordan High School in Watts. “But overall, we want to do what’s best for children and no one wants to disrupt their education.”

While hundreds of thousands of students showed up for the first day of school Monday, administrators said enrollments were lower than expected across the district. But they also said that higher absenteeism is usual during the first couple of weeks of class.

At Canoga Park High, for example, about 1,300 students attended classes Monday--about 200 fewer than expected. Reseda High had some 1,500 pupils--about 500 fewer than anticipated.

In unusual and confusing scheduling this year, most schools will be closed on Thursday--the Yom Kippur holiday, which typically is met with high absenteeism, officials said. Most of those on year-round class schedules will remain open however. “Wherever we could close schools and avoid the absenteeism, we did,” said Bill Rivera, the district’s spokesman.

The district’s transportation system had opening-day problems, with students in some schools waiting in the wrong place for buses and others missing their rides altogether. District officials said bus stops and routes will be ironed out over the next few days.

At Cleveland High, students were upset that their cafeteria remained closed and surrounded by a chain link fence because of quake damage. “We don’t have our area where we used to hang out,” said sophomore Maria Andrade, 16. “We don’t have any place to go.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Chavez contributed to this story.