New Beginnings : Students, Teachers Spend Time Getting Acclimated to School Again

At Santa Paula’s Briggs Elementary School, Sergio and Gloria Juarez stood at a discreet distance from the playground Tuesday, watching as their daughter Valerie, 8, lined up with classmates for her first day of third grade.

“She was so excited,” Gloria Juarez said. “She was up at 3 o’clock asking, ‘Mom, what time is it? Is it time for school yet?’ ”

The opening bell finally rang at 8:10 a.m. Tuesday at Briggs, signaling the end of the summer for the school’s 230 students.

The Briggs students were joined by more than 12,500 children from three districts who returned to school Tuesday. Most of these students were in the Ventura Unified School District, where first-day enrollment for the district’s 18 traditional-calendar schools was 12,259, officials said.

About 2,600 students on year-round schedules at Ventura’s six other schools started classes in July.

In Somis’ Mesa Union Elementary School District, 335 students showed up Tuesday for the first day, said Supt. Dennis Convery.

Countywide, about 80,000 more students are scheduled to head back to classes this week or next.

For some students, starting back was tough at first, but things got better as the day went along.

“I was tired because I had to get up so early this morning,” said Erin Beasley, 6, a first-grader at Ventura’s Juanamaria Elementary School. “Now I’m happy,” Erin said during recess. “I feel good.”

At the two-school Briggs district, enrollment Tuesday was 334, compared with 321 at the end of last school year, Supt. Carol Vines said.

And this year, about 45 third-graders are joining students in fourth through eighth grades at Briggs. A grade has been added at the school because of crowding at Olivelands Elementary, Vines said.

For Valerie Juarez and some of her third-grade classmates, one of the hardest lessons of the first day may have been learning how to pronounce the name of their new teacher--Karen Llewellyn.

“You guys are just so smart,” said Llewellyn after students practiced saying “Good morning, Ms. Llewellyn.”

“It’s going to be a great year,” Llewellyn told the class.

But in the Briggs district, as in school districts countywide, students and teachers will feel the pinch of budget problems this year.

A part-time librarian and a part-time band teacher were laid off last spring, Vines said. A teaching specialist already working at Briggs is taking on the extra duty of running the school’s refurbished library.

And with the loss of the band teacher, Briggs is without instrumental music instruction this year, Vines said. However, a nonprofit foundation is trying to raise money to replace the music teacher, she said.

At Juanamaria, fifth-grade teacher Jane Di Brezzo spent much of the morning outlining school rules and her academic expectations for her 31 new students.

“The first thing a teacher does is set a tone,” Di Brezzo said. After laying out the rules, she followed with an “icebreaker,” allowing students to interview each other to find out more about their new classmates.

Many students were happy to return.

“I was in a hurry to get back,” said Juanamaria fifth-grader Mario Ramirez, 10. The highlight of his summer was a trip to Mexico to visit relatives, he said. “That was the only fun thing I did,” Mario said.

“I was nervous walking in this morning,” said Jean Clark, 10, a fifth-grade student at Juanamaria. After the three-month break, she said, “everybody looks different--so much older.”

Some students grumbled that week after week of gloomy summer weather cut down on typical outdoor activities, such as trips to the beach.

“It was awful,” said Briggs seventh-grader Gloria Torres, 12, wrinkling her nose.

“Summer was boring,” said Kim Ikeda, 12, also in seventh grade at Briggs, who said she spent most of her vacation from school baby-sitting. “You couldn’t go to the beach or do anything. We went only once, but we didn’t stay because it was so cold.”

This year, teachers at Juanamaria will try to integrate more third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students who speak limited English into regular classrooms as part of efforts to restructure the school, Principal David Gomez said. About 166 of the school’s 560 students have limited English skills, he said.

Supt. Cesare Caldarelli Jr. of the Ventura Unified School District said budget problems in Ventura will mean larger classes at the district’s four middle schools and fewer teachers and support personnel trying to do the same amount of work.

“We’re looking forward to a very good year, but under the pall of state budget conditions,” Caldarelli said.