September 6, 1992

From their State Department perch six blocks west of the West Wing, the Baker team had scoffed and raged for two years about the clumsy attempts of Bush officials to deal with politics and domestic affairs. The foreign affairs "whiz kids," as they liked to think of themselves, could not always hide their contempt for what they saw as a slapstick, slapdash White House operation. When the country turned inward after the Persian Gulf war, when Los Angeles burned, when Ross Perot tapped into voter disgust, James A. Baker 3d and his band of fortysome thing aides looked over at the White House in wonder. What they saw was President Bush and his advisers squandering record-high approval ratings through their failure to understand the anxiety of Americans in economic pain and to offer a convincing plan to solve their problems. Fixing the Mechanics But now that they have commandeered the White House, members of the Baker SWAT team confide that they are coming to grips with the fact that it is not so easy to ride to the rescue. They are, after all, operating within the constraints of a Reagan-Bush legacy that has dismantled important levers of government, especially in the domestic agencies. They are also working with a President who had wasted political capital for four years by scorning the idea that he needed to communicate, or even develop, a coherent theme and long-range strategy for his Presidency.

If they had a mail-order catalogue and 12 months of lead time, the Jets could not have ordered a better season opener than the one they have with the Atlanta Falcons this afternoon. What better way to test the mettle of a young, inexperienced quarterback than a baptism by blitz in front of a loud, hostile sellout crowd of 71,000 celebrating the opening of a sparkling new dome stadium?

This is a joyless Labor Day for many people. It is like a May Day without a Maypole or Christmas without gift-giving. It is hard to remember a time when so much was going wrong for the American worker. Labor Day used to be a celebration of the nation's wage earners -- 20-year employees in factory and office jobs with rising incomes that made tens of millions of Americans, by the early 1970's, solidly middle class. Rarely, if ever, had prosperity been so widely spread through a population. "You could train a person on the job and it was like he had been born into a rich family," said Richard Freeman, a Harvard labor economist.

THEY stand at the front of the classroom, not wanting to make their way all the way in. Their eyes fill with tears as the teacher says it is time for class to begin. They press their faces to the window pane and wave one last goodbye. "And those are the mothers," chuckles Louise Williamson, who for 13 years has witnessed all the drama attendant to the first day of school in her kindergarten classroom at the Old Greenwich Elementary School. "Last year on the first day I had more parents and videocameras than I did children in my classroom," Mrs. Williamson said. "The children may have had two years in nursery school, but this is so different. This is the Big School. It's always a little bit hard that first day, on the students and on their parents." So Mrs. Williamson gently uncurls the clinging child's fingers from her leg and softly urges the parents to close the door behind them. "Then by 9:30 A.M. most of the kids are ready for lunch -- they're so anxious to use those new lunch boxes," she said. Enrollments Are Up Statewide, 493,000 public school students and thousands more in private schools, will don their crisp new clothes, slip on their neon-colored backpacks and head to class for the start of the school year, which for some was as early as the last week of August, for others as late as this Wednesday. This is 10,000 more students than last year, the bulk of them in kindergarten and first grade. "We're experiencing a mini-boom and, unfortunately with the state's economy, different districts have had to make difficult choices in terms of staffing and that will mean an increase in class size in many schools," said State Commissioner of Education Vincent L. Ferrandino. As teachers scrambled to tack up bulletin boards and pored over curriculums and as yet uncracked texts, parents and children have been doing the back-to-school hop, zipping from one store to the next, gathering stocks of clean socks and high tops, new jeans and hair ribbons. The back-to-school jitters are common not only for kindergartners but also for students making any transition -- to middle school or to high school. "My oldest daughter is starting high school and she's been our pioneer every step of the way," said Pat Jennette, of Danbury, who is the outgoing citywide president of the Parent-Teacher Organization. She said her daughter Reade would be "mortified" to talk about her feelings about starting at Danbury High School. "But I know she's a bit nervous, a happy, excited nervous," Mrs. Jennette said. Sneak Preview Educators say the key to a calm, happy student is a calm, happy parent. "If the parent reassures the kindergarten student or the high school student that this is a very positive experience, and if they don't get anxious, then the child is likely to be calm about it," said Gail Nordmoe, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the Danbury School District. "High school students can feel as insecure as children starting kindergarten because it's a very new experience and they don't know what to expect." To solve that problem, students entering high school or middle school in Danbury may participate in a "Sneak Preview," a day when they get "the lowdown" on how to get from algebra to Spanish class and to the cafeteria, who their teachers are and what is expected of them during the year. School districts like Stamford, Waterbury and New Haven offer orientation programs in the spring and in the few days before school begins for students starting kindergarten, middle school and ninth grade. The day before 5-year old Altan Sadik-Khan entered school last week, he was able to drop in to his classroom at Old Greenwich Elementary School and size up his classmates, his desk and the toys. "He's ready to start learning and, at this point, summer has gotten a little boring for him," said his mother, Karen Sadik-Khan of Old Greenwich. "What will take some getting used to will be the length of the day because it's all-day kindergarten. I've tried to explain to him there will be a time to eat lunch and he won't just be able to open the fridge when he wants. Mostly, we've been talking about the fun he'll have." Even for children who have been through this drill before, Commissioner Ferrandino said it was important for parents to convey a sense of excitement and to stay involved in the school throughout the year. "Beyond the classroom, education has to be a sharing process between the teachers and parents, between the schools and the community," said Mr. Ferrandino, who himself is in the first year of his new position. "Schools have to make themselves accessible to parents, if that means providing access to the professional staff at night or on weekends from time to time for the working parents." Baggies and Plaid As the doors open this year, it will be to familiar shades of denim, most of it new and bluer than the deep night sky. Girls from elementary to to high school are wearing bright-colored leggings and big shirts, ribbed sweaters and plaid skirts and dresses. "Plaid is very big and so are hats," said Laurie Champany, a saleswoman in the girls' wear department at J. C. Penney in Waterford. If fathers happen to notice a few of their ties missing, it is likely their adolescent daughters have absconded with them, ties being a very hot wardrobe item. Meanwhile, a group of boys shopping at Bob's Store in Milford said baggy jeans and baggy canvas pants with elastic at the ankle were the school look for fall. Tossed together with a college football jersey, a colored sweatshirt or an extra-big button down and they are ready to go. Some schools, including several public schools in New Haven, have instituted a uniform policy. One parent in line at a uniform store last month said she had been waiting years for the policy because it was so much less expensive. Uniforms also do away with that dread I-don't-have-a-thing-to-wear lament, which is followed by a ransacking of drawers and closets. 'A New Beginning' Beyond the trappings of Batman lunch boxes and freshly sharpened pencils what students, parents and educators alike say they look forward to is the fresh start September always brings. Said Douglas Fainelli, principal of the Old Greenwich Elementary School, "It's a chance for all of us to have a new beginning, to improve over the year before." On the first day of school Mr. Fainelli rang the old school bell and students and parents gathered in front of the school to talk about what's ahead, sing a few songs and then the children headed inside. Altan Sadik-Khan was among them. In anticipation of the big event, his mother had said: "This will be the third time I've gone through it but I'll be snapping pictures and I'll probably be close to tears. After all, he's my last child and this is the first day of school."

With New York's Senate primary nine days away, Geraldine A. Ferraro's main rivals struggle to shift the focus of the race, which has been dominated by Ms. Ferraro's fame in the year of the woman, to who best represents the state's traditionally liberal Democratic voters.