Panel Urges $1-Million Cut in High School Sports : Education: Foes say the plan would kill most competitive sports in city; feud boils between elementary, secondary school factions.

A $1-million--or 62%--slash in high school sports programs has been proposed by a teacher-staff committee advising San Diego city schools trustees on how to trim $37 million in services to balance the 1991-92 budget.

The recommendation, already generating anger as it circulates among high school principals and athletic directors, comes in addition to a $200,000, or 12.4%, reduction, already proposed by Supt. Tom Payzant as part of his budget scenario and reluctantly agreed to by coaches.

Should the $1-million cut be approved by trustees, it would effectively be the death knell for most competitive sports in the nation’s eighth-largest urban school system, critics say.

“It would wipe out everything but football, basketball and perhaps baseball and softball,” said Wayne De Bate, who manages the district’s $1.6-million athletic program in secondary schools. The $200,000 cutback would only eliminate swimming and water polo, and perhaps soccer.

La Jolla High school athletic director Rick Eveleth, reflecting the view of his colleagues, condemned the proposed $1-million cut as shortsighted.

“Cutting athletics is cutting kids,” Eveleth warned. He said that organized athletics represent some of the district’s most successful dropout prevention and race-human relations programs by motivating many students to stay in school, work harder in academics to maintain sports eligibility and develop interpersonal skills.

“Even a $200,000 reduction is hard to take,” Eveleth said, although athletic directors will not strongly fight some cuts in a year when half the district’s nurses, all of its career and special dropout counselors, and its entire elementary instrumental music program are being targeted for elimination.

The $1-million cut recommended by the advisory committee reflects in part the internal warfare developing between elementary and secondary school factions over which district programs should have priority as trustees are forced to eliminate 7% of total services.

“Everyone is pointing the finger at the other guy,” said trustee Sue Braun, who is trying to figure out alternatives to cutting any money from the sports programs. “But, while the ($1 million) recommendation is a big disappointment to me, the secondary principals are also saying to me, ‘Cut out elementary prep time.’ ”

The prep time program, which costs $4.7 million a year, allows most of the district’s elementary teachers between 45 and 60 minutes a week of lesson preparation time by bringing part-time physical education and art instructors into their classrooms.

San Diego Teachers Assn., the union representing classroom employees, fought hard to get the program started two years ago because, traditionally, only secondary teachers enjoyed preparation time.

The $1-million proposed athletics cut originated with the union’s board of directors. Ten of the union’s 16 board members are from elementary schools.

“It came down to saving nurses or sports,” Hugh Boyle, union president, said.

Union executive director Bill Harju, a member of the district’s budget advisory committee, took it to the committee for approval.

“Our position is that we are concerned first about saving full-time jobs, like the nurses and counselors,” Harju said. (Coaches would not be fired if sports were eliminated but would teach regular physical education and other classes.)

“Our hope also is that the (proposal) will show the public how serious the budget crisis is and have them put pressure on Sacramento to change things.” School districts throughout California are contemplating cutbacks because of Gov. Pete Wilson’s plans not to increase school funding next year to keep up with student growth and other needs.

But Madison High School principal Errol Bennett, the only high school representatives among the 15 members of the advisory committee, said the panel’s recommendation should be viewed skeptically because of the almost total imbalance toward elementary representatives.

Bennett is angry with the proposal. “I tried to tell (the other members) that sports are not only good for kids in keeping them active after school but that they promote teamwork, race relations, all the things that are good for schools” and for society.

“We say that we don’t want cuts to affect the classroom and, damn it, I tell people that sports are ‘outside classrooms.’ ”

Bennett added, “I don’t think that parents are going to let a group of elementary teachers dictate this.”

Former school trustee Kay Davis, who fought to maintain as much of the school sports programs as possible during her eight-year tenure that ended last year, vowed to speak publicly against any cut greater than the $200,000 already proposed.

Davis said she is uncomfortable even with the $200,000 reduction. Swimming and water polo are targeted because of pool rental costs--no city school has its own pool--and the availability of private clubs that promote competitive swimming. Similarly, administrators say that soccer is offered through private leagues.

But Davis, whose daughter plays soccer at Point Loma High, pointed out that competitive youth soccer clubs generally cost $500 to join and that they enjoy competition at a level higher than that required for students to participate at schools.

“And what are minority students going to do?” she said, referring to the large numbers of soccer players at San Diego and Hoover high schools, which have heavily Latino and Indochinese populations. “They can participate now because all you need is a ball.” San Diego High’s team won the county school championship in boys soccer this year.

San Diego High Principal Robert Amparan said youth teams do not exist outside of school in the inner-city and barrio areas where most of his students live. “I don’t think any sports are really expendable,” Amparan said.