Closure of School Among Cutbacks Studied by Board : Education: Trustees of South Bay Union High School District say they don’t intend to shut either of two campuses. But they want to keep their options open.

Facing declining enrollment and a shortage of state funds, the South Bay Union High School District is studying austerity measures including layoffs and the closure of one of its two high schools.

At a meeting Wednesday night, District Supt. Walter Hale presented school board members with several austerity options to offset what he calculates could amount to a $1.4-million budget shortfall in fiscal 1991-92.

Board members voted 4 to 1 to solicit bids for an environmental impact study of the most drastic option, closure of Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach or Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach.

Those in the majority say their decision did not signal an intention to close one of the high schools, but rather a desire to keep the district’s options open by seeing how much a closure study would cost.

“None of us wants to close a high school,” Lyn Flory, the vice president of the school board, said Thursday. “However, in planning for the survival of the district we have to know what the options are.”

But board member James Duffy, the lone dissenter, said even considering a closure study would be fruitless because district residents will not tolerate seeing another of their high schools shuttered. The district had three high schools until 1982, when Aviation High in Redondo Beach was closed because of declining enrollment.

“The south end of the district will not allow closure of Redondo High and the north end will not allow closure of Mira Costa,” Duffy said Thursday. “There is very strong feeling there. They will raise hell with the board.”

The district, which serves Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, is being pinched in several ways--among them declining enrollment, in which the student population has plunged from 7,000 in 1970 to 2,900.

Officials expect at least 100 fewer students in the coming academic year. That means continued losses in enrollment-based allocations from the state--the main source of funding for the district’s $16-million annual operating budget.

In Sacramento, lottery revenues bound for schools are sluggish and Gov. Pete Wilson, trying to stave off a state budget shortfall, is proposing to freeze enrollment-based allocations at their current levels.

Meanwhile, the district this year must begin paying a new property tax collection fee of more than $300,000 annually to the county. And declining interest rates are reducing the amount the district can earn on proceeds from its sale of the Aviation High School site.

“We have $15 million in the county treasury from the sale of Aviation,” Hale said Thursday. “If interest rates drop just one point, we lose $150,000.”

Hale said that unless the enrollment and school funding pictures improve, the district will have to cut spending by $1.4 million in the budget year beginning July 1 and make additional cuts in the future.

To plan for the worst, he presented board members with three main austerity options Wednesday. One calls for closing one of the high schools, which would save the district more than $3 million annually.

Another would involve using one of the two high schools to serve all of the district’s regular high school students and the second school for other purposes, such as adult and special education. The estimated savings: More than $1 million annually.

The third plan calls for “program cuts” involving layoffs of at least 10 of the district’s 161 teachers, 20 of its 180 support staffers--such as custodians and clerical workers--and an unspecified number of its 15 full-time administrative employees. That plan would save an estimated $1.4 million annually.

To make such cuts possible in case they are approved, the district recently notified teachers with less than two years’ experience that it may not be able to employ them next year.

“These are notices of non-reelection, saying that you may not be re-employed,” Jerry Goddard, the district’s personnel director, said Thursday. “If programs might be reduced and (teachers’) services might not be needed, you have to tell them by March 15.”

Board members were also presented with two other options, which they rejected out of hand.

One, to continue spending at current levels, was dismissed because it would bankrupt the district. The other, to use proceeds from the sale of the Aviation site to offset budget shortages, was rejected because it would only provide temporary relief and would drain an important source of interest income.

Duffy on Thursday said the school board should concentrate solely on cuts, such as layoffs, arguing that to shift regular students to a single high school or to close one of the schools outright would be far too drastic.

Enrollment at schools that feed students into the high school district has stabilized, he noted, portraying this as a sign that the district’s declining enrollment will soon be reversed. And state education funding will improve as economic growth resumes, Duffy said.

“The problems we face now are due directly and indirectly to the recession we’re in, and recession is not a permanent condition,” he said.

Board member William Beverly took issue with that analysis Thursday, saying many of those enrolled in area elementary schools are children of parents who live outside the district but work in local businesses. Since such “transfers” are not allowed at the high school level, the number of students who enter the local high school district may continue to decline, he said.

The district would also be unwise to count on improvement in the economy and a corresponding increase in state school outlays, Beverly said.

“In the seven years I’ve been on the board, anytime we’ve speculated on financial matters things have always turned out worse than our most pessimistic scenario,” he said. “It would be nice if Mr. Duffy were right, but realistically, that probably won’t happen.”

If the school district’s financial difficulties and its declining enrollment are prolonged, Beverly said, the district may need more than layoffs; it may also have to consider closing one of its schools. It is this thinking, he said, that prompted board members to vote Wednesday to solicit bids on the environmental impact study.

“It’s not saying that this board advocates closing a school,” Beverly said. “It’s saying, ‘Look, with the lack of funding and the effects of declining enrollment, we need to put the district in a position to have whatever options are necessary.”