Back to School . . . Maybe : Reinventing how they teach children, educators have created diverse academic calendars. : NEXT L.A.: A look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis.

The tomatoes in the garden are ripe, summer evenings are noticeably shorter and TV commercials are crammed with back-to-school jeans ads. Must be time for the much-anticipated, much-dreaded First Day of School, right?

Well, yes. Sort of. In a faint echo of the timing of long-ago crop harvests, most California students still don new sneakers and head off to school within a couple of weeks either side of Labor Day, spotless backpacks in hand. And most will wrap up the school year sometime in June.

But the variety of schedules included within those broad generalizations is becoming more confusing as schools, bent on reinventing how they teach children, tinker with the traditional academic calendar.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, has no less than six district-sanctioned calendars. Only a relative few of its 543 regular schools follow the 180-day, two-semester program that the district considers “traditional.” In some other Southern California school systems the year begins in mid-August and year-round schools begin their year in early July.

Yet even that doesn’t begin to describe the diversity of schedules because many schools have been given broad discretion to decide when to hold class, as long as they put in the state-required minimum number of instructional minutes.

Culturally, the lack of a common school year has myriad effects. Popular campgrounds are full later into the fall because some children are still on vacation. Disneyland may be jammed with students whose schools are on hiatus in October or April. Child care arrangements and vacation trips are complicated, especially if the children in a family are out of school at different times.

And since each school may schedule staff training at any time in the year, many parents have to either take time off work or find someone to look after their children for a day at a time.

Much of the variation results from the need for overcrowded schools to accommodate more students. Students in year-round schools are divided into tracks, and one of the groups is on vacation at all times. A few other schools operate on a year-round schedule for educational reasons, choosing to break the traditional long summer vacation into shorter blocks throughout the year to reduce the time spent on review when children return.

Some schools in Los Angeles began operating year-round by choice in the mid-1970s; in the 1980s, a mushrooming school-age population made such schedules a necessity rather than an option. In the early 1990s all Los Angeles Unified schools were on a year-round schedule for about two years, but parent opposition forced most campuses to return to a more traditional term.

Now 176 schools, roughly a third of those in the district, follow one of four year-round patterns, which vary in the number of tracks as well as the length and timing of the vacations.

Many students at those schools started their year July 5. Two of the four patterns have 163 days, instead of the standard 180. But each of those 163 days is about 30 minutes longer, so the number of minutes annually adds up to the state minimum.

The Vaughn Next Century Learning Center charter school in Pacoima learned this summer that school calendars can be controversial. As a charter school, Vaughn operates free of many district and state rules and policies, and this year the parents asked Principal Yvonne Chan to do away with the year-round schedule the school had been on for more than 20 years.

Chan found a way to add the equivalent of 20 days to the school year and drop the year-round schedule, but the district penalized Vaughn by withdrawing its application for a state grant meant to encourage schools to operate year-round.

But Chan’s efforts showed that when schools are given autonomy, they will find a schedule that best suits their needs. For example, Los Angeles schools designated as LEARN sites, which operate with greater independence from the district bureaucracy, start school today, instead of next Monday. But some of the LEARN schools will use this whole week for staff training and students won’t show up until next week.

Year-round schools are experimenting with scheduling staff development days to make it possible for an entire faculty--rather than just the teachers who would normally be in session--to meet.

The faculty at Leo Politi School near Downtown, for example, met recently with an expert in reading and language development. It was the first time in three years that the teachers had all been together and, as a result, some children will have an extra day off in December.

“It was nice to see people and converse with people and to be trained so that everybody is doing things the same way,” said Mike Dreebin, a fourth grade teacher at the school.

Another wrinkle in scheduling is that the tentative union contract teachers will vote on this month gives them two so-called “pupil-free days” they can use to get ready for the year or for planning or whatever they choose. Those are days for which the teachers are paid, but students are not in attendance.

A practice that is altering the usual attendance pattern at some schools is called “banking.” Teachers save up the 10 to 30 minutes of paid preparation time allowed them each day, so they can get together one day a week for an afternoon or one whole day every two weeks to plan curriculum or programs.

*

John Gilroy, a field representative for the state Department of Education, said the state regulates instructional time in minutes, rather than days, to allow schools as much flexibility as possible. And schools are being increasingly innovative in how they use that time, he said.

“It’s a big state, and if you can think of a variation, the likelihood is that it is being done somewhere,” Gilroy said.

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What’s Cool for Fall

These are popular items with the back-to-school set this year, whenever their classes begin:

* Teddy bear backpacks

* Beeper cases

* Insulated lunch bags

* Anything Pocahontas or Batman

* School supplies decorated with Japanese characters: Pochacco the dog, Keroppi the frog or Pippo Pippo the pig.

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The Many First Days of School

The traditional school year is almost a thing of the past. In the Los Angeles Unified district, six different official calendars are in use, but the dates when classes begin vary by campus. With breaks and holidays, all schools offer the equivalent of 180 school days. At year- round schools, marked with an * below, a student’s track also determines the start of class. Here are this year’s calendars for Los Angeles Unified:

*

Type of Calendar

*

Traditional, (79 schools)

Start date: Sept. 11

End date: June 21

*

LEARN, (285 schools)

Start date: Sept. 5

End date: June 21

*

90 / 30, (56 schools)

Track A

Start date: Aug. 16

End date: June 28

*

Tracks B/ C

Start date: July 5

End date: June 28

*

Track D

Start date: July 5

End date: May 13

*

Concept 6*, (78 schools)

Track A

Start date: Aug. 30

End date: June 28

*

Track B

Start date: July 5

End date: June 27

*

Track C

Start date: July 5

End date: April 30

*

Concept 6 modified*, (36 schools)

Track A

Start date: Aug. 7

End date: June 28

*

Track B

Start date: July 5

End date: May 31

*

Track C

Start date: July 5

End date: June 27

*

60 / 20*, (7 schools)

Track A

Start date: July 31

End date: June 28

*

Tracks B / C

Start date: July 5

End date: May 31

*

Tracks D

Start date: July 5

End date: June 27

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District