The computer system for the Los Angeles Unified School District faltered Thursday, leaving school staff unable to access records and leaving students without class schedules just days before the school year starts next week.

The line of parents and students at Van Nuy’s High School stretched down the hall, almost reaching outside. The parents and students — who were waiting to speak with counselors — described being shuffled from one office to another, as helpless staff explained that the district’s new computer system was in disarray.

Then an announcement came over the loud speakers, instructing everyone to log off the system for half an-hour due to a school district request.

“They just said the system was all messed up and they were trying to get it running,” said Jessica Reyes, who was attempting to secure a class schedule for her son before he starts the ninth grade on Tuesday.

“It’s not just a few kids, there’s a bunch waiting,” she said after emerging from the school’s counseling office.

Parents and students reported being scheduled for the wrong classes, having their records lost and being denied registration — even those who filed all the required paperwork months ago.

When Holly Cornell walked into orientation at her son’s new middle school, Hale Charter Academy in Woodland Hills, she should have emerged with a class schedule, text books and her son’s student identification card.

After all, administrators had all her son’s transfer paperwork sitting on the desk in front of them. It was filed months in advance. But Cornell’s son was denied registration, and he will now start his first day at a new school without knowing his classes.

“It was just chaos,” Cornell said. “There was no one there to help us, just the vice principal and she didn’t know what to do; she just said, ‘the computer system’s down.’ I guess they’re waiting for someone to fix it.”

Ever persistent, Cornell went to her son’s former campus, Northridge Middle School, in hopes administrators there could help transfer his records.

But school staffers shrugged and told her the new system is a “nightmare,” she said. As it stands, Cornell said she was told her son would be “temporarily” put in classes on the first day of school, while administrators wait on the system to issue his real schedule.

The new computer system, called My Integrated Student Information System or MiSiS, is the result of a federal court settlement. Nearly two decades ago, the district agreed to build the system in order to comply with federal laws and protect the rights of students with learning disabilities.

District administrators had told a 17-year-old student to repeat the 10th grade for a third time because they had failed to find records documenting her learning disabilities. The teen was reading at a second grade level while attending classes and being graded alongside peers meeting higher reading levels.

But building a computer system to track the records of 650,000 students hasn’t been an easy task, district officials have said. Although they’ve spent the last decade planning it out and the last few months testing it during summer school, there are still glitches and user familiarity issues.

While its rollout could have waited — and the teachers’ union has requested as much — district officials decided it was better to start using the system on the first day of school.

“Within the first week we should be in a place where we can get the students into the right classes; and on some campuses, the first day,” Los Angeles Unified School District Spokeswoman Lydia Ramos said.

“We’re just asking everyone to be patient, knowing that when we move entire systems over there are transition periods where we’ve got to make some fixes and find some solutions,” Ramos said.

The glitches aren’t preventing every child from enrolling. A majority of district-run schools have reported being able to register students, Ramos said. Van Nuys High School freshman Tara Limbean’s dad said enrolling was a breeze.

“It was very smooth, very nice,” Tim Limbean said.