Classes

Chicago teachers were resigned to finishing this school week still on strike, but both sides in the labor dispute were pushing hard to reach a deal by Friday afternoon in hopes that more than 350,000 students could return to class on Monday. Talks on Thursday went 15 hours before adjourning after midnight. Teachers union President Karen Lewis and school board President David Vitale told reporters there had been progress and that they were hoping to have a pact finished in time to get students back to class next week.

My sympathy goes out to those young people from Avalon who are going to classes in tents ("Avalon Students Roughing It as Contamination Closes School," Sept. 26). We had the same situation. I graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1940. This was in Boyle Heights. There had been a large earthquake in the early 1930s. There simply wasn't enough money to repair all of the buildings. So, we had some of our classes in tents. The tent classes were just as good as the regular classes. No big deal!

All buildings at the University of Texas at Austin were reopened Friday afternoon after a bomb threat earlier prompted a campus-wide evacuation, officials said. The university grounds were cleared for reentry at noon, a campus police dispatcher told the Los Angeles Times. "We are very confident the campus is safe," said university President William Powers Jr. at a broadcast news briefing. He said university officials had worked with local, state and federal officials to assess the situation.

At the main entrance to a campus in Tucson, a sign greets visitors with "Welcome to Tucson High, Home of the Largest Xicano Studies Program in the Nation." "Xicano," or Chicano, studies is a 14-year-old program in the Tucson Unified School District that offers classes from elementary through high school in topics such as literature, history and social justice that emphasize Latino authors and history. In the wake of Arizona's adoption of a law to crack down on illegal immigration, such classes are the subject of another ethnically tinged fight in the state.

The Community Services Department is offering a four-week series of Jazzercise classes starting this month. The jazz-dance exercise course is based on simple movements to a variety of music styles. Classes are open to anyone 16 and older and are at the Huntington Beach gym and pool facility, 1600 Palm Ave. Tuition is based on the number of classes a week. A $16 once-a-week course will be from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m. on consecutive Saturdays, March 1 to 22.

As a teacher who did not participate in the reported "sickout" at Santa Ana High School on March 17 and who was on campus for the entire school day, I wish to inform parents of the students that the district statement that "no classes were canceled" is incorrect. In fact the entire third period was canceled, in effect canceling about 100 classes. The time normally scheduled for the third period was called "second period" by the administration, and this "second period" was followed by "fourth period."

Beginning this month, contractor A. T. (Tom) Horsfall will teach "Innovations in Construction" classes aimed at people who plan to build a new house or remodel an existing one. Offered at Los Angeles City College and Cal State Los Angeles, the class is available in two parts, with the first a prerequisite for the second, Horsfall said. At City College, Part I will be offered beginning Tuesday through Nov. 12 from 7 to 10 p.m. at $200.

Go back, through a universe of chalk dust and repeating bells, to a classroom outfitted with a line of squat stoves, a long table stacked with dry goods, a row of teenage girls mixing dough in dented bowls, writing down the equation of a good pie in notebooks tracked by ink and flour. It was 1980, and my freshman high school class was taking home economics, learning how to make a pot of stew, set a proper dinner table, bake and frost a cake, as the last months of the Carter administration clicked down.

There are two important considerations omitted from the story ("Classroom Space at a Premium," Times Valley Edition, June 30) concerning hordes of students unable to enroll in community college classes in the Valley because of overcrowding: 1. It is true that almost all of the general education courses in the community colleges fill early and are closed to latecomers. But of those students fortunate enough to enroll, the percentage who actually complete the classes is seldom more than 65%, and sometimes less than 50%. Most colleges try to compensate by overloading classes at the start of the semester.