Prince George's County Schools Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. made a formal apology today for computer problems and poor preparation that prevented thousands of high school students from attending classes in the first week of the school year.

"To have more than 8,000 high school students without a schedule on the first day is inexcusable," Hite said at a news conference.

He blamed the schedule problem on a "glitch" with the county's centralized student records system, known as SchoolMax.

At least 1,910 students were still without class schedules this morning, school officials said. The worst affected school today was Duval High School in Lanham, where there were about 350 students without class schedules.

Students waited in cafeterias and gymnasiums throughout the week as officials worked to schedule their classes, drawing complaints from parents and lawmakers.

"We and our colleagues have received numerous calls from concerned parents," Del. Melony Griffith (D-Dist. 25) of Upper Marlboro said in a joint statement today with county Senate Chairman Douglas J.J. Peters (D-Dist. 23) of Bowie.

The legislators said they will request a formal review and report from the school system.

County Information Technology Director Wesley Watts said the county began processing course requests for high school students two months late.

"We are normally finished the first week in May," Watts said at the news conference. "We didn't start until May."

Watts did not provide an explanation about why the course requests were processed later than in the past.

The late start, combined with problems with the new SchoolMax system that was used for the first time for scheduling this year, led to the debacle, Hite said. The computer system takes far longer than the old system to resolve schedule conflicts, up to 45 minutes per pupil.

"The problem was clearly with SchoolMax," said the superintendent, who added that the county may seek penalty fees from the software company for the problems. "But there was some human error in places."

Hite said the priority is now getting the rest of the students into classes, which he hoped to do by Aug. 31. Hite would not say what may happen to personnel responsible for the problem.

Hite said the school system will offer Saturday help sessions next month to help students affected by the scheduling problem, and teachers were preparing condensed lesson plans to help with catch-up.

E-mail Daniel Valentine at dvalentine@gazette.net.