School Board Restores Some of Funds It Cut

After a two-hour public hearing at which the San Diego city school board was accused of being “sneaky” for restoring funds for just one program after indicating that no programs would be restored, the board Monday voted to put more than $900,000 back into five other areas that had been cut.

The Board of Education of the San Diego Unified School District decided to restore $120,000 to its bilingual education program, $570,000 to reducing class size and training teachers in junior high school English classes, $42,000 to high school career counseling, $100,000 to special education and $84,000 to the elementary school music program.

Monday’s action came a week after the board, in a 3-2 vote, decided to reinstate $230,000 to the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program even though it had earlier decided to spend some unanticipated money from the state on salary increases for teachers and not make piecemeal restorations to programs that had been cut in March.

Board member Susan Davis, who argued vigorously against putting funds back into the GATE program, said: “I certainly was on the losing end of the vote last week, and what we said then has proved true: It’s very difficult to open up one area of the budget without opening all the others.”

‘Sneaky’ Move Charged

Katie Klumpp, a member of the PTA, said after she learned that the board was not planning to restore individual programs: “I trusted you, and with difficulty I swallowed that . . . then last week three of you decided to change it. Do you call that fair? I call that sneaky.”

Klumpp and others said the board’s restoration of funds to the GATE program was arbitrary and unfair.

“Last week’s move to restore monies to the gifted program invites open political fighting between factions supportive of different programs, which is unfortunate since it invites policy-making based on the strongest political clout,” said Kenji Ima, who spoke in favor of restoring funds to the second language program.

Ima said the board should come up with a more systematic way of evaluating which programs will be restored. “I think if you do this, you will avoid the appearance of favoritism and shoddy decision-making,” he said, drawing applause from the audience of about 50.

The board is expected to formally adopt its 1987-88 budget at the end of the month, after staff members rework it to include the changes approved Monday.

The money to pay for the changes will come from the district’s share of lottery revenue, which is expected to total $2.5 million this year. Monday’s action will leave about $1.5 million in the lottery reserve, in case lottery revenues are not as high as has been predicted.

No Separate Account

But the district will not have a separate account to pay for unexpected needs, so any money left in the lottery fund will in effect serve as a contingency fund.

About 30 people addressed the board to plead for reinstatement of funds to several programs. The majority spoke in favor of restoring funds to the elementary school music program, which was cut from 11 instrumental music teachers to five.

“Five music teachers for 110 schools in ‘America’s Finest City’ is a lamentable statistic. Our children are being short-changed,” said Karen Keltner, the associate conductor of San Diego Opera.

Beverly Tesch, an elementary school music teacher, told the board that she has been giving lessons to students this summer. “Many of the children are terribly enthusiastic about continuing, but many of them will be returning to schools without programs.

“In effect, they will have to discontinue their lessons, often after years of practice and acquiring instruments, often at significant cost to their families,” Tesch said. “If you could see the look of shock on the faces of children when they were told the music program would not be returned to their school, you might reconsider.”

In the end, the board did reconsider, taking $84,000 from the lottery revenue and using it to bring the number of elementary school music teachers up to seven.

The district’s Second Language Program, which had been slated for a cut from 10 teachers to seven, was restored to its previous level by a unanimous board vote.

The special education program, which had been cut by $1.6 million, will get back $100,000 of that, to be distributed by Superintendent Thomas Payzant and his staff. San Diego resident Ramona Cervantes, whose son is deaf, made an impassioned plea to the board to restore some of the funds.

Without those funds, “my son will be going to school to be baby-sat” instead of getting an education, Cervantes said. “I want my child to communicate and I want him to have a quality program. . . . Every time there are cuts, the program is going down.”