Schools May Ax Highly Touted Reading Project

A three-year, $115.7-million expansion of San Diego city school programs came to an end Tuesday when district officials proposed cutting $2.7 million from the 1987-88 school budget.

The proposed cuts, which reflect a new era of reduced state increases for school programs, include an acclaimed remedial reading program that last year offered assistance to about 4,000 elementary school students. The program’s scheduled demise brought about 100 parents and teachers to Tuesday’s school board meeting to protest the action.

But district officials promised that this is only the beginning of a year of painful cuts. When Gov. George Deukmejian’s proposed 1987-88 budget is fully analyzed, the district probably will have to slash $6 million to $10 million more from its programs, Deputy Supt. Bertha Pendleton said.

“All of these are going to hurt. All of them really will hurt,” Pendleton said. “To the degree possible, we are trying to preserve the quality and preserve the things that really matter. But you cannot make cuts of this magnitude and assume that quality of services will continue.”

In addition to the cuts, the district will have to negotiate a new contract with the 6,000 teachers and other staff members represented by the San Diego Teachers Assn. The union’s contract ends this year. The district is currently predicting no raise for teachers next year.

“We will not be satisfied with a zero percent increase,” SDTA President Don Crawford said.

Crawford and James Carvalho, executive director of the Classified Employees Assn. that represents the district’s 3,000 clerical and technical employees, on Tuesday denounced the budget cut proposals. Both claimed that staff cuts are concentrated in their ranks while few administrative positions will be eliminated.

The district is proposing to eliminate about 131 staff positions, almost all of them through retirement or attrition. Of that total, about 124 are teachers, nurses, aides, speech pathologists, secretaries and other employees, Crawford said. Seven are administrators.

A proposal to end the 22-year-old Miller-Unruh remedial reading program drew the strongest reaction from teachers and parents in the nearly full Education Center auditorium. Under the guidelines, the district and the state share the cost of paying 47 specially trained teachers to help improve the deficient reading skills of youngsters in kindergarten through third grade.

Because Deukmejian is proposing to end state support for the program, the district would eliminate its $1.1-million share of the plan. Half that amount would be plowed back into a separate program, the Basic Skills Supplementary Assistance Program, which offers remedial help in reading, math and language arts.

But Basic Skills program teachers are not specially trained to diagnose and solve reading problems, as Miller-Unruh teachers are, said Carrie Christianson, who taught Basic Skills for three years at Freese Elementary School.

The trustees, who are scheduled to vote on the cuts Tuesday, also heard opposition from parents of students at Rolando Park Elementary and Foster elementary schools, which would lose their “fundamental skills” magnet programs in another cost-cutting move.