PEGGY PEATTIE / Union-Tribune Larry Negrete greeted his daughter, Jessica, 7, at Smythe Elementary School after she rode on the bus for the first time to the campus Monday., the first day of school year.

Judging by the stunned look on her son Marco's face on the first day of school Monday, the switch made no sense to him, either. His old school changed, jettisoning kindergarten through third grade, and he was being sent across busy Smythe Avenue to attend second grade at Smythe Elementary School.

Federal orders to improve the seven-school San Ysidro School District have caused the most visible changes in recent history. Five schools have received new principals in the past year. A sixth school has closed for construction. And four schools have either shed or added grade levels.

Calderon noticed two things as she and her son stepped onto the Smythe campus for the first day of school Monday. The parking lot was small. But the colorful balloons arching over the driveway were a nice touch, a sign that the people in charge of Marco's education are trying to motivate him.

“We come with more optimism for this school and this principal,” Calderon said.

The Calderons' hope and confusion is playing out across the San Ysidro School District as the new year begins. The hope is that San Ysidro will finally find a solution to the bedeviling problem of how to pass state tests administered in a language that most of its students don't understand.

Nearly two-thirds of San Ysidro's 5,000 students in kindergarten through eighth grade do not speak English fluently. Low test scores have typically demonstrated not so much whether San Ysidro's students know the answers but that they don't understand the questions.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act introduced consequences for low scores. The law mandates minimum pass rates on English and math tests, and it assigns sanctions for repeated failure.

Five of San Ysidro's seven campuses are on the federal watch list of schools in need of improvement. The path to improvement under federal sanctions includes allowing students to switch schools, giving them free tutoring, replacing staff and restructuring schools.

Last year, San Ysidro had five elementary schools for kindergarten through sixth grade. San Ysidro Middle School had seventh and eighth grades, and Ocean View Hills School was for kindergarten through eighth grade.

Four schools have been reconfigured:

San Ysidro Middle has taken the sixth grade from four elementary schools and set up those students in a cluster of portable classrooms;

Beyer and Smythe elementaries provide classes for kindergarten through third grade;

La Mirada Elementary has only fourth-and fifth-graders.

The changes will allow larger teams of educators to collaborate at each grade level. It will also makes teacher training easier because all teachers in a given grade are concentrated at fewer campuses. Teachers who specialize in helping struggling students in early grades can spend more time teaching on two campuses instead of visiting five schools.

The changes have caused some unrest. Beyer Elementary had already had three principals in the past two years. When the school board appointed a fourth to begin this school year, the community rebelled and selected parent Anthony Rodriguez to run for the school board.

Rodriguez said Beyer parents appealed to the board this summer but were ignored.

“They had already made their decision on who they were going to put in there,” Rodriguez said. He also said the reconfiguration has put his two children at different schools, making for a harried morning commute.

“It's real difficult for parents right now,” Rodriguez said.

The dissent has risen all the way to then-school board president Sandy Lopez, who said of Superintendent Manuel Paul from the dais in a July meeting, “He doesn't know what he's doing.”

Paul has said from the beginning of his tenure as superintendent that it will not be business as usual in San Ysidro.

“We're doing something different because we need different results,” Paul said.

Chris Moran: (619) 498-6637; chris.moran@uniontrib.com