School Day

California's tenure protections for teachers go too far, and the Legislature has been unwilling to do anything about it. So it's easy to understand why Students Matter, an organization backed by a reform-minded entrepreneur in the Bay Area, is hoping the courts will do what lawmakers haven't. On Monday, it filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking to overturn the statutes that undergird the tenure system. Those laws require schools to decide after 18 months whether a teacher deserves tenure, to lay off teachers based almost solely on seniority and go through an arcane, ridiculously lengthy and slanted appeals process before a bad teacher can be fired.

California's tenure protections for teachers go too far, and the Legislature has been unwilling to do anything about it. So it's easy to understand why Students Matter, an organization backed by a reform-minded entrepreneur in the Bay Area, is hoping the courts will do what lawmakers haven't. On Monday, it filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking to overturn the statutes that undergird the tenure system. Those laws require schools to decide after 18 months whether a teacher deserves tenure, to lay off teachers based almost solely on seniority and go through an arcane, ridiculously lengthy and slanted appeals process before a bad teacher can be fired.

On Thursday, Oct. 8, 1964, the day the police decided my mother killed my father, I woke up late, the kind of late that snaps you out of your favorite dream, the one where you're wrapped in the arms of your favorite TV hunk--mine was Dr. Kildare--and he's just about to . . . when bang your unconscious tells you the sun is out, the lights are on all over the house and you're going to be late for school because nobody got you out of bed. We were a family of five. I was 14 and the oldest.

SACRAMENTO — Faced with backlash from food lovers and cooks, Assemblyman William Monning (D-Carmel) said Wednesday he is dropping a proposal to ban food trucks from school areas. Monning, chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, said his measure lacked enough votes to win approval this year. "Our calculus was: It was still not ready for prime time," Monning said, adding that he would look for other ways to address his concerns about obesity among schoolchildren. His measure, AB 1678, continued to draw strong opposition from the food-vending industry even after he agreed recently to change it to reduce the distance that food trucks would have to maintain from schools.

The small squares of colored paper began cropping up on the doors and walls of Henry M. Gunn High School last week, two days after William Dickens, 16, killed himself on the nearby train tracks. "Just keep swimming," one Post-it note said. "There is always someone who will listen," was written on another. And, "There's no meaning to happiness w/o sadness. Take it easy." Dickens was the fourth Gunn student in less than six months to commit suicide near where East Meadow Drive crosses the Caltrain tracks here in the affluent, high-achieving heart of the Silicon Valley.

Here's a question for all you high school students out there in cyberspace: If it were up to you, would you rather start your school day at 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m.? (Sorry, noon is not an option.) Sleep in school start time too early If you chose 8:30, you get an A+. According to a new study, students were far more likely to get eight hours of shut-eye at night and were less likely to report being unhappy, depressed, annoyed or irritated when they began their first class at 8:30.

A later start to the school day may sound good — but what about the inconvenience factor, and how do you get your school district to sign on? "Eight Major Obstacles to Delaying School Start Times," at the National Sleep Foundation's website, http://www.sleepfoundation.org , covers issues such as altered transportation schedules and the effect on after-school activities and on the time teachers have available to spend with their families. "General Advocacy Tips for Changing School Start Times," also at the sleep foundation website, provides information for those who want to see later start times implemented in their school district.

As summer winds down, another new school year brings fresh notebooks, sharp pencils and — for many kids — a new cycle of sleep deprivation. With classes that start as early as 7 a.m. and buses that pull up long before sunrise, some 80% of American kids in grades 6 through 12 are falling short of sleep recommendations during the school year, according to research by the National Sleep Foundation, a sleep advocacy group. Overtired kids, studies suggest, struggle with depression.

More than 200 students from four Westside schools are gathering in a Santa Monica park today, coming together to meet and make friends with teenagers from other cities. Sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from schools in Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and Culver City are participating in Field Day '96, organized by parent volunteers as a "celebration of education," said parent Sandra Ruch of West Los Angeles.

Just about every year at this time, nostalgia over foods eaten in school cafeterias years ago rears a maudlin head. How good or bad those school day foods actually were matters not. It's how well remembered, adored and revered they are today that counts. Judy Gilges of Long Beach writes: "In the cafeteria in the early '60s, they used to make a tuna sandwich and a killer peanut butter cookie. . . ." Ellen Vakovich remembers a crumb cake sold during nutrition break.

School buses are likely to keep rolling for now, as the Legislature on Thursday restored $248 million for home-to-school transportation that was particularly crucial for small and rural school districts that need to take students across long distances. Gov. Jerry Brown, who eliminated the school busing money as of January after state revenues fell short of projections, has indicated that he supports the move. Educators throughout California had mobilized against the midyear elimination of all busing money, arguing that it would hit hardest remote districts such as Death Valley, which spends about $3,400 per student, compared to $26 or less for many suburban districts.

This is what happens when school laws are passed for political reasons rather than educational ones. Starting in January, public school teachers from kindergarten on must include some sort of positive message about gay people in their lessons, but as The Times has reported, they have little idea how to comply with the law. What's more, the state lacks the time or resources to develop lesson plans or a curriculum to help guide them. It's appropriate for state lawmakers to ban discrimination in public schools and to require that students not be harassed or tormented.

It is the day before homecoming, and there is trouble at the Robert Lee High School football field. The field is dying. The field that was once so lush, so emerald green, that the maintenance staff took calls from other schools begging to know its secret. Visitors sometimes assumed it was AstroTurf, then genuflected and found, to their surprise, real blades of springy Bermuda grass. Then came Texas' punishing drought. The parched field now has patches of yellow and brown while the rest struggles to stay green.

As I write, it's three days till summer vacation, but who's counting? Everybody's counting, that's who. The teachers, the crossing guard, even me. Three days. An eternity. Since when did the school year run till almost July? "Hey, Huckleberry," I say. "What, Dad?" "Three more days," I tell him. "I know," says the little guy. "I knoooooooooooow. " It's been such a long year for him that he's taken to calling his pretty young teacher "Mom," which didn't exactly thrill her, or his actual mother, who does virtually everything for him except breathe.

As the sun rises over this lonely land, turning snowy Montana mountaintops a startling pink, the little school bus is already miles into its morning mission. For an hour and a half, the door swings open at the end of gravel driveways and country road intersections, gathering children one and two at a time until there are nine — the entire student body of Spring Creek School. Perched atop a hill, not far from where Gen. George Crook battled Crazy Horse in the 1876 Battle of the Rosebud, tiny Spring Creek is one of only 200 one-room public schoolhouses left in America.

It's not pleasant to return to a place where, as a child, you were almost always afraid. So, a few years ago, when I stepped onto the campus of the James A. Foshay Learning Center, its familiar grim, Depression-era facade made my heart pound. I spent some of the unhappiest days of my life at Foshay, back when it was Foshay Junior High. And when I graduated 38 years ago, I hoped I would never return. In the 1970s, the school was at the bottom of the education barrel. At 13, I felt I must have committed crimes I didn't understand to have ended up there, because I was certainly being punished.

With a goal of increasing pedestrian safety on city streets, several Ventura County schools will be participating in Walk to School Day on Wednesday. Students and adults will be encouraged to walk to school together in hopes of raising awareness of safety when crossing the street and walking to school. It is also meant to highlight the importance of crosswalks, sidewalks and crossing guards. Organizers say they hope the event will encourage students and their parents to walk together.

By this time next year, Orange Unified School District students might be sitting in classrooms a little longer each day. With a 6-1 vote, the school board agreed to study extending the school day by as much as an hour or adding days to the academic year. "We have looked at a lot of alternatives to improve educational quality," said Trustee Robert H. Viviano, who proposed the study.

The general assumption is that when it comes to educating American kids, more is more. Longer school hours. Saturday school. Summer school. Yet more than 120 school districts across the nation are finding that less can also be more — less being fewer days spent in school. The four-day school week has been around for decades, according to the National Council of State Legislatures, but it's quietly spreading as a money-saving tactic, especially after several states — including Montana, Georgia, Missouri and Washington — passed legislation allowing school districts to make the switch as long as they lengthened each school day so that there was no reduction in instructional hours.

The Los Angeles school district will hold a shortened day of classes on May 13 to accommodate a planned teachers union protest without interrupting standardized testing on most campuses. Dismissal time will vary from school to school but could be up to several hours earlier than normal. Schools will be required to make up the lost time from the shortened day later in the year, according to Los Angeles Unified School District officials. The teachers' demonstration is aimed at encouraging state legislators to place tax extensions on the fall ballot to provide continued funding to school districts.