Some things never change.

But the first day back today for most of the state's 190,000 students isn't all business as usual. There are more students, there are fewer staffers and vegetarian lasagna shares menu space with wiener in a roll and cheese pizza. It's a brave new world for the class of '97 and beyond.

But for 9-year-old Donald Carreira and many of his peers, today is simply a fond aloha to the carefree days of summer and the beginning of another, more structured chapter.

"I'm looking forward to it mostly because of seeing my friends," said Carreira, a Heeia Elementary School fifth-grader.

"But I like art. I like math. I like computer and the library."

He even likes the first day.

"The first day is get-to-know-you day," he said. "You share what you did during the summer. But sometimes you get nervous because you don't know everybody and you don't know the teacher."

Enrollment is up by about 3,500 students statewide this year, said Deputy Superintendent Stan Seki. Most of the growth is in central Oahu, Kailua-Kona on the Big Island and Kihei on Maui, he said.

Belt-tightening is being felt throughout the state, said Department of Education spokesman Greg Knudsen.

"We are just asking schools to continue doing the best they can with relatively fewer resources," he said.

The department absorbed $20 million in cuts in 1995 and held the line this year, Knudsen said. As a result, the administration has been downsized, schools are dealing with a 2 percent across-the-board drop in funding for supplies and equipment, and the school system may not have enough money to pay its water bill.

"We feel at this point that we may not have enough money to cover water for the whole year," Knudsen said.

But, he added, the Legislature may come up with supplemental funding to help the Department of Education out of the jam.

If this morning's "school jam" failed to live up to the hype, it was probably because 26 public schools in the state (and most of the private institutions) are already in session. One of every eight elementary school students in Hawaii (about 13,000) now attends year-round school, which began in August, Knudsen said. Two new year-round schools - Kamalii Elementary in Kihei and Holomua Elementary in Ewa - opened at the beginning of this school year.

There's also a new "student-centered" school in Lanikai, Knudsen said. The elementary school has "the maximum amount of autonomy a public school can attain," he said.

That's in keeping with the department's effort to give individual schools more clout.

"Now there is far less top down directive," Knudsen said.