Representatives of Bloomfield-Garfield Corp. will be knocking on doors this morning to remind parents that the Pittsburgh Public Schools' accelerated learning academies begin their school year Monday.

Rick Flanagan, the community group's youth development director, said he wants to make sure kids show up at Fort Pitt ALA in Garfield to make the most of the extra time built into the school's calendar.

The academies, most of them located in disadvantaged neighborhoods, have a school day that's 45 minutes longer and a school year 10 days longer than the city standard. Besides Fort Pitt, the academies are Arlington, Colfax in Squirrel Hill, Murray in Mount Oliver, Weil in the Hill District and King, Northview and Rooney, all on the North Side.

The district's other schools start Aug 30. Kindergarten has its own schedule; those classes begin Friday at the academies and Sept. 6 at other district elementary schools.

Superintendent Mark Roosevelt opened the academies last year to boost achievement. Attendance the first week ranged from 77 percent at Northview to 90 percent at Colfax, according to figures the district provided at the time.

Mr. Flanagan said he wants better attendance this year. His group of volunteers will meet at the school at 10 a.m. today to begin a canvass, one of a handful of steps he's taken to raise awareness about the start of school.

He said he sent a volunteer to the school to call 270 families and was concerned with the results, which included 20 wrong numbers and 120 disconnected numbers. Mr. Flanagan said the volunteer reached 78 parents and received a positive response from them.

Mr. Flanagan said he also mailed a flyer to about 100 students involved in the organization's after-school program and prepared a leaflet to pass out at local football games. He's also willing to track down truants next week.

"I'd be willing to organize volunteers to knock on doors Monday," he said.

District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said all district parents received letters from Mr. Roosevelt at the end of the last school year to tell them when classes would resume.

She said parents also received school-year calendars about a month ago and last week began receiving a recorded phone message from Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Max Starks, in which he said he's gearing up for a new season and hopes students are gearing up for theirs.

Ms. Pugh said academy principals might have taken individual measures to remind families about the start of the school year. She said the district had no plan for rounding up truants Monday but didn't know what individual schools might have planned.