Preschool Deficit Puts Plan for New Building in Doubt : Child care: Santa Fe Springs officials are questioning whether to build a $2-million permanent facility for a program that is $41,000 in debt.

For more than four years, the city-run preschool has managed to squeeze more than 100 children into seven trailers clumped under a shade tree in Los Nietos Park.

Teachers in the program make do without a staff room or storage space. Aides bump elbows every day as they prepare 30 hot breakfasts, 90 hot lunches and 200 snacks in a tiny kitchen. Parents step over napping children to collect their kids.

The toughest thing to deal with, though, is the noise that sometimes ricochets from one adjoining trailer to the next, leaving some children tense and hyperactive, according to staff members. Robert Williams, 4, loves preschool--except for one thing. “It’s very noisy. I look for a place that’s not so crowded,” he said recently.

The trailers were supposed to be just a temporary arrangement. But hopes for a $2-million permanent facility for the program may have been dashed by news that the preschool center is in financial trouble.

Recent reports show that midway through this fiscal year, the preschool was operating with a $41,000 deficit--a figure city offi cials fear they can cut to no lower than $30,000 by the end of the year. The city contributes $105,100 in general funds toward the program’s $428,700 annual budget. Most of the rest of the program’s revenues come from fees collected from parents.

Santa Fe Springs has been a pioneer in developing and operating child care for its residents and for people who work in the area. In addition to the preschool, which opened in 1986, the city has cared for 100 children at two after-school centers since 1982. But the report may harden City Council members’ resistance to spending money on a permanent preschool facility, which would be the city’s biggest and boldest investment ever in child care.

The proposed facility would provide 8,000 square feet of classroom, kitchen, halls, cafeteria and playroom space for the preschool program. It would, for the first time, provide handicapped access. In addition, it would provide space for 26 students from the after-school program, which has 105 children on its waiting list.

“We’ve got all we can handle just keeping up with our current program,” Councilwoman Betty Wilson said last week. “I realize that it’s not fancy, but it serves the purpose. With the recession, this just isn’t a priority right now.”

The program’s deficit is the result of a sharp increase in the cost of food and supplies combined with an unprecedented drop in enrollment, according to the reports. Dorothy Zitzmann, supervisor of the child services program and author of the latest report, said that many parents lost their jobs last fall and could no longer afford to pay the preschool program’s $65 weekly fee.

“First, parents went who were in the real estate business. Then went the parents who were in plastics and cosmetics. Then the smaller and shaky factories. We’re seeing even the others being laid off,” Zitzmann said. “Now we’re becoming a victim of the economy, too.”

Zitzmann said that 49 children left the program last fall. Enrollment dropped from an average of 110 children to 80.

In an aggressive effort to recruit more children, the city recently sent flyers to homes and schools. It advertised the program on cable television. Officials even placed an ad on a lighted billboard at the corner of Telegraph and Orange avenues, Zitzmann said. Enrollment has climbed back up to 108, she said, but not before revenues dropped 9%.

At the same time enrollment was dropping, food prices almost doubled last fall, Zitzmann said. The center responded by attempting to cut costs. Instead of hot dogs for snacks, children now munch on crackers and cheese. They are served less meat and more beans. And canned fruit has been substituted for fresh fruit. But strict federal guidelines regulate what the children are fed, and Zitzmann said there is not much else staffers can do. “It’s just not possible to cut any more corners,” she said.

Moreover, she said, “for many children this is their main meal of the day.”

The preschool center also exceeded its budget for supplies. Zitzmann attributes that to her effort to meet accreditation standards set by the National Assn. for the Education of Young Children. For example, in addition to the normal costs of replacing worn toys and torn books, staffers bought a $300 set of special dolls with ethnic facial features and skin colors. To gain accreditation, they also purchased special books that depicted women in non-sexist roles. The investment was worth it, Zitzmann said, because accreditation gives the program added prestige and ensures that enrollment remains stable.

Zitzmann notes that repairs to the trailers already have cost the city thousands of dollars. In the long run, she said, it makes economic sense to build a permanent facility.

For the past two years, maintenance costs for the trailers have been nearly double what was budgeted, according to figures provided by Susan Bergeron-Vance, assistant director of finance. Much of that money has been spent on patching together facilities that were never intended to be permanent. Bills for replacing the trailers’ cracked roofs and worn linoleum floors, for example, totaled nearly $10,000 in unanticipated expenses last spring.

But Councilman Al Sharp said that it is still cheaper to repair the trailers, or even to buy new ones, than to fund a new building. “I question whether the new center is really needed,” Sharp said. “You run a city the way you do a family. You live within your means, and you don’t overspend your wallet.”

Zitzmann says she is grateful to the city for the support it has given child care. But why, she asks, is the preschool program the only city program that operates out of trailers? And why, she wonders, are councilmen asking her to justify its existence in purely financial terms?

She contends that none of the 1,000 children to enter the preschool and child-care programs to date have ended up in gangs or have dropped out of schools. She also notes that the preschool, which she says is one of the few reasonably priced preschools around that has openings, enables parents to keep working.

“How can you quantify the value of these things?” she said. “This decision should come down to a lot more than dollars and cents. The children deserve better.”