New PV School Budget Funds Miraleste, Calms Critics

The Palos Verdes Peninsula school board has adopted a new budget that generally satisfies critics and provides funds for the continued, court-ordered operation of Miraleste High School on the east side of the district.

In adopting a $36-million final draft Monday night, the board reinstated instrumental music instruction in grade schools and set aside a 3% contingency fund. It also designated employee benefits and increased salaries as its top priorities in spending a $1.4-million budget surplus and any other new money that may show up in the course of the 1988-89 school year.

Last year’s operating budget was about $35 million, when enrollment was 9,810. Projected enrollment this year is 9,570, in line with a continuing decline in the district’s student population.

District spokeswoman Nancy Mahr said the new budget includes $1.2 million in program cuts--mainly in the areas of personnel, special reading instruction, and maintenance and supplies--and $1 million to operate Miraleste High.

Supt. Jack Price said that the budget will maintain the basic quality of the district’s educational program over the short term but that cuts in teacher training and program development efforts “will be felt in future years.”

In earlier budget drafts, the district had planned to save about $1 million by closing Miraleste, but in May a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled in a lawsuit that the school must be kept open until the district complies with a state environmental impact law. In July, the district lost an appeal that would have overturned the lower court decision.

A parents group, the East Peninsula Education Council, filed the lawsuit as part of its effort to establish a separate school system on the east side. The group’s plan, sparked by the school board’s decision last November to close Miraleste, is being reviewed by the state Board of Education.

Mahr said the district is negotiating salary and fringe benefits with all of its employee bargaining units. Administrators and non-teaching workers were to receive a 6% salary boost under a two-year contract, contingent on Miraleste closing.

But since that didn’t happen, Mahr said, the contract was reopened for salary negotiations. She said costs of insurance coverage for workers will be a major consideration in any new pacts, following a decision by Blue Cross to cancel its coverage for all school employees in the state.

Other insurance carriers want higher premiums, ranging from 50% to 90% more than Blue Cross, for the same coverage, she said.

Each 1% increase in salaries would cost about $250,000--money that will come out of the surplus and possibly from a one-time $204,000 state grant provided in legislation designed to help districts with declining enrollment, Mahr said.

Gov. George Deukmejian is expected to sign or veto the grant bill by the end of this month.

The board’s decision to reinstate band music in the grade schools was another victory for Brigitte Schuegraf and other members of Friends of School Music, a private group that has struggled over the years to preserve the program.

As in the past, the group will donate some of the cost of the program, with $44,200 pledged for the coming year. District costs will be about $20,000.

Groups concerned about the fate of other extracurricular activities were placated when the board found ways to continue most of them.