Fountain Valley Group Tries to Raise $28,000 for Salary : Parents Battle to Keep a ‘Good’ Teacher

In an unusual effort to save the job of a popular high school music teacher, a group of Fountain Valley parents is rushing to raise $28,000 to pay his salary and keep his music program alive at the school.

Parents and students have staged a sing-a-thon at a pizza parlor, persuaded a yogurt shop to pitch in part of its profits and solicited donations outside supermarkets in the effort to keep Ted Reid, 34, teaching at Fountain Valley High School.

Reid, widely praised for his ability to inspire students to excel and embrace the love of music, has taught at the school for the last three years but was among 32 teachers who were told that they would not be rehired for the fall semester.

Because of a steadily declining enrollment in the Huntington Beach Union High School District, officials said, there will be 2,200 fewer students in the district’s six high schools this fall, compared to figures two years ago.

But parents, who rave about Reid’s program and how it has turned their children on to music and the arts, have vowed to raise enough money to retain him as the music teacher and director of the school’s three choirs.

“The kind of teacher who can pass on his enthusiasm and knowledge of music is rare,” said Pat Harney, whose three children have studied under Reid. “A lot of artists aren’t necessarily good teachers. They can’t convey their feelings and their expertise to kids. But Ted Reid is really good at that. He turns the kids on to music.”

While parent groups in Huntington Beach and other districts have raised money to supplement teacher salaries or augment special programs, directors of other education groups in Irvine and Huntington Beach say it is rare for a group to take on the task of raising money to save one teacher’s job.

Originally, the group formed to keep Reid on the payroll--the Vocal Music Foundation with about 100 parent members--was prepared to raise $43,000 to pay Reid’s full-time salary, his compensation for teaching three periods of music and two English classes. In addition, the school district had told the group that in order to put Reid on the fall schedule, it would have to come up with the entire amount by Aug. 1.

But after hearing of the parents’ determination and of the difficulties the group was having in raising the money, the district said it would require only $28,000, or enough to pay Reid for the three periods of music. The district said it needed only a portion of the total amount--$12,000--by Aug. 15, with the rest due later.

In addition to other fund-raising activities, the group also appealed to real estate agencies in the Huntington Beach area for help, saying that if a school doesn’t have a good music program, home sales could drop.

All this attention, frankly, makes Reid a little uneasy.

“It’s gratifying and a little bit flattering,” he said. “It’s also a little bit uncomfortable to have people spending so much of their free time and free energy on your behalf. But I know ultimately that it’s on behalf of their children.”

Parents say special programs such as Reid’s choirs make the school a special place for students. But they say that in these times of scarce school funds, such programs are fast becoming luxuries that parents are having to pay for.

Says Music Programs Fading

“Fountain Valley doesn’t have any music in its elementary schools anymore,” said Susan Pike, the mother of two students in the music program. “I feel like a lot of people don’t realize what’s happening. By the time they get to high school, a lot of programs that we have known in years past will not be around any more.”

Rebecca Einstein, a former Reid student who will become a music major at Ithaca College in New York this fall, praised Reid for his commitment.

“I cannot speak highly enough about this program,” she said. “The best part of my high school experience was the choir.”

The school has three choirs; each puts on several performances a year and the groups also appear in some out-of-town concerts.

“It takes hours and hours of rehearsal and planning the tours and planning different performances,” Einstein said. “Mr. Reid happens to be the type of teacher who puts his entire person into it.”

Parents and students say that Reid has become more than just a teacher. Because the choirs, like many other extracurricular activities, take up so much of Reid’s time, he has become a friend, mentor and role model for their children. He, in turn, said that the music program at Fountain Valley was successful because of parent support.

Indicative of Quality Students

“Their support is indicative of quality of students we have,” Reid said. “The support we get from parents makes it possible for us to reach higher and higher and higher goals.”

Reid said there have been a few other jobs he has heard about that he might qualify for, but “some of the jobs I heard about, I wasn’t interested in. Fountain Valley has a wonderful program. The job conditions are really excellent. Once you’ve been in that situation, it’s harder to take any old job just to have a job.”

Married and the father of a 2-month-old child, Reid said the uncertainty over his future had been “a point of tremendous concern for my wife and me. We are renters, and we wanted to buy a home.”

Because he did not know his status with the Huntington Beach school district, he has found two other part-time jobs: one directing a 100-voice adult choir called the Masterworks Chorale at Orange Coast College and the other a part-time job as music director at a Huntington Beach church.

The district was not going to do away with the music program entirely at Fountain Valley High. But administrators were going to ask a music teacher at another school to take on the programs at both schools.

That will kill the quality of the program, parents and students contend.

Compares It to Coach

“That is comparable to asking a football coach to take over at two schools,” Reid said. “(The other teacher) has a big program, and I have a big program.”

“It’s do-able, but both programs are going to suffer,” he said. “It has nothing to do with his ability but with the nature of the job.”

Reid’s story illustrates how one school district’s financial crisis affects the lives of students, teachers and parents.

Huntington Beach Union’s enrollment has been on the decline for several years, choking off school revenues. For every student lost, the district must give up $3,219 in state funding.

For more than a decade, the district has been hiring teachers on one-year temporary contracts as the number of students has declined.

“They just don’t give permanent contracts anymore (at Huntington Beach),” said Jim Harlan, executive director of West Orange County United Teachers, which represents five school districts. “They hire everyone as temporaries.”

In December, the district announced that it would not lay off tenured teachers even if it was over-staffed. Instead, it would place “surplus” tenured teachers into a substitute pool and would use them on an as-needed basis but would continue paying them a full-time salary.

Teachers on year-to-year contracts like Reid, however, would be laid off, it was decided.

So far, many of those in the substitute pool have found jobs with other districts, according to Assistant Supt. Susan Roper, who is in charge of teacher hiring. Others were absorbed into the regular schedule because of attrition and retirements.

Question System

Some of Reid’s students and their parents suggest that there is something wrong with a system that puts more weight on a teacher’s longevity than on his or her teaching qualities.

“It’s sort of sad,” said student Joel Williams, who graduated last year. “The system that we have in California today doesn’t recognize good teachers versus bad teachers. It just recognizes seniority. You have teachers that have been in the district a long time and have seniority, but they don’t have the good ideas of a new teacher just coming out of college.

“I’m not saying every new teacher is better than every old teacher,” he said. “But there are some teachers whose time is just up.”