October 2, 1984

SOME parents who chose to send their children to Public School 6 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan instead of to one of the neighborhood's many private and parochial schools were having second thoughts last week. The buses were so full that children had to stand; the school was short a kindergarten teacher; only three of the four school aides were on the job; some kindergartners were disoriented because their teachers did not guide them in their first trip to the cafeteria, and there was not enough staff to unpack all the textbooks. Yet even as these hitches occurred, the Alliance for the Public Schools was taking out newspaper advertisements and preparing to put posters on buses, urging people to support and use New York City's public schools. The movement to widen the constituency for public education has been growing in New York City and is spreading to other big cities. Such efforts arise out of concern that affluent whites have lost interest in urban schools as enrollments have come to be made up mostly of the poor and members of minority groups.

Because of an error by a research group, the Retirement Migration Project, an article on the Style page April 2 about the mobility patterns of the elderly was incorrect. There has been no significant reversal in the migration of those over 60 to small towns and rural regions. An article explaining the error appears on page C12.

China showed off its arsenal of modern missiles for the first time today in celebrating 35 years of Communist rule. The unusual military display was the highlight of the annual parade marking the Communist takeover of the mainland in 1949. In a speech, Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader, called for military preparedness and for peaceful reunification with Taiwan, the Nationalist-ruled island province. The last occasion on which the military took part in the annual parade through Tian An Men Square in downtown Peking was a quarter century ago. At that time, the Chinese did not yet have a modern missile force.

The Supreme Court, opening its new term, turned its attention today to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. The Justices agreed to hear cases involving the definition of obscenity, the right to speak in favor of homosexuality, and the right of lawyers to seek clients for specific cases. In another First Amendment case, involving the free exercise of religion, the Court agreed to decide whether a state can deny a driver's license to a person who refuses on religious grounds to have a photograph taken. The Court sidestepped several civil rights controversies. It declined to intervene in the court-supervised desegregation of the St. Louis schools and refused to hear a challenge to a Miami ordinance setting aside public works contracts for black construction firms.

United States Justice Department officials, acting under a new extradition treaty with Italy, yesterday ordered the arrest of 28 Americans and Italians wanted in connection with Italy's major crackdown on the Sicilian Mafia. Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, described the suspects as ''high level'' organized-crime figures involved in the multibillion-dollar international heroin trade. He said they faced Italian charges of murder, drug trafficking and racketeering. Four of the 28 were said to be in Federal custody in a related case. Sixteen more, Mr. Giuliani said, have arranged to surrender to Federal authorities today in Brooklyn, Newark, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The remaining eight, he said, are being sought.