The fall semester begins today at the three San Fernando Valley community colleges, but fewer students will be enrolled this year, thanks to reductions in class offerings.

"It's not for want of students -- they're here, they're lining up," said Ed Pardo, spokesman for Mission College, which is anticipating 5 percent fewer students than its fall 2002 enrollment of 7,900.

Mission President Adriana Barrera agreed. "The availability and the flexibility that has been the hallmark of community colleges just isn't there at this point," she said.

While final enrollment numbers won't be known for a few weeks, officials at Los Angeles Valley College, Pierce College and Mission College said they expected enrollment to be down, because there are fewer classes available than last fall. Pierce cut 130 classes and Mission cut 70 classes due to state budget cuts. The number of classes cut at Valley College was not available.

Campus officials said they cut classes that were underenrolled first, and tried to preserve basic English and math classes, and classes students need to transfer.

Pierce is predicting a 5 percent enrollment decrease, down from 19,000 students last fall, and Valley College is predicting a 2 percent drop, down from 19,300 in fall 2002.

Student demand, however, is extremely high. At Valley College, class sizes run in the mid-40s, with waiting lists that cut off at 20, said President Tyree Wieder. That means a lot of classrooms will be crammed to overflowing this week, with students who managed to enroll -- and a dozen or more hoping to add the class if someone else drops it.

Leila Poole, 26, of Woodland Hills already has a bachelor's degree in sports medicine from Pepperdine University but needs one more class in microbiology so she can apply for graduate school to become a physician's assistant.

Currently, she's attending one class at Santa Monica College and two at Pierce, hoping she can add one when someone else drops the class.

"I'm just trying to get this one class and get on with my life," she said last week as she waited in line at Pierce for more than an hour. "I'm just counting on kids who are scared off by the material."

Karina Ritche, 20, of Burbank is also on a waiting list for the two classes she tried to get at Valley College, but she has had other problems: She works full time and finds it difficult to access campus offices, because they've cut their hours due to budget cuts.

"It makes it difficult and really discouraging," Ritche said. "I'm trying extra hard to do everything."

Although the LACCD doesn't track whether a student is enrolled at more than one college, officials say they're hearing about students piecing schedules together from several colleges.

"I see people from Valley coming to Mission, from the College of the Canyons; some people have to drive to three different colleges" to get the classes they need, said Baltazar Martinez, 23, of Sylmar, former student body president at Mission, who now works in the admissions department.