This Issue:

Table of Contents

Cover Story

Cover Story - Spanish Version

Mini-Lesson

Comprehension Quiz

Teacher's Guide and Worksheets

The Great Classroom Crunch

Many American kids starting back to school this fall missed something important: a classroom! A traditional classroom, anyway. This year a record number of students are enrolled in U.S. schools: 52.2 million. That means schools had to scramble to find space.

Many school districts have added "portable" classrooms outside overcrowded schools. The trailer-like portables are so popular that supplies have run out.

High schools face the biggest squeeze. At Lake Brantley High School in Altamonte Springs, Florida, the hallways are so crowded, said Nancy Woods, 17, that "you can barely get through the doorways."

In California some schools have had to turn libraries and computer labs into classrooms. Gail Chancey, a fourth-grade teacher in Los Angeles, is worried: "Kids can't get the right library skills if we don't have a library."

Many schools are adding extra lunch periods and morning start times to thin the crowds.

When is the population boom expected to slow? Not until 2007, when today's kids will be grown up. By then, schools should start preparing for the next wave: your kids!

Next: Let The Games Begin (In 2004)