School Fund Cuts OKd at Huntington Beach : Education: The high school district faces a $2.6-million budget slash, eliminating 42 personnel positions and a program for pregnant students.

Trustees of the Huntington Beach Union High School District have approved $2.6 million in budget cuts that will include slashing 42 personnel positions and eliminating an acclaimed program for pregnant students.

The Board of Trustees, bowing to pressure from hundreds of parents, teachers and students, voted late Tuesday to spare a school swimming pool, and also nurses and psychologists who were be included in the cuts. But the board, citing a severe financial crisis in the district, also voted to eliminate a program for pregnant students and slash by nearly 15% accounts that pay for such items as teacher seminars, maintenance, supplies and textbooks.

The $2.6-million cut, which represents nearly 4% of the district’s $69-million annual budget, will effectively eliminate about 28 teaching positions and 14 other employees. The reductions were prompted by an ongoing enrollment decline and the statewide education-funding crisis affecting all California school districts.

While no teachers are expected to be laid off, 28 positions, including new hires and replacements, will not be filled and will lead to increasing average class size to 29 students from 28.5. The increase dismayed Trustee Jerry Sullivan.

“We aren’t realistic as a nation about class size,” said Sullivan, a Cal State Long Beach professor of education and English. “In my opinion, of all the things we’re doing tonight, this is the worst. But we have to in order to save the money.”

Among those who will be laid off are three physical education attendants, six clerical workers, a switchboard operator and half the district’s health clerks.

The reduction in teaching positions “will make things tight” but will likely not require the laying off of any teachers, Supt. Lawrence Kemper said Wednesday.

A controversial casualty of the district’s cuts was the elimination of its teen mothers program, which costs $100,000 a year. Beginning next fall, pregnant students instead may take independent study courses at the district’s learning center.

Under the 20-year-old voluntary program, pregnant students have continued their academic studies while receiving instruction on prenatal care, child development and career guidance. The program’s proponents argue that its biggest asset has been as a support group for the girls.

“It’s a real travesty,” Mary Ellen Kyle, the program’s teacher and coordinator, said Wednesday. “The district doesn’t realize what’s going on over here and how important this place is to these girls.”

After a two-hour hearing Tuesday attended by about 300 concerned district employees and residents, trustees spent another 90 minutes studying Kemper’s 14-point budget plan and an array of alternative cuts.

His budget plan called for cutting half of the district’s school nurses and counseling psychologists, which would have left one of each to serve two schools. Trustees agreed with opponents who argued that such a move would threaten the health, safety and well-being of students. The cuts would have trimmed $360,000 in spending.

In addition, the board delayed for one year a proposal to close Huntington Beach High School’s swimming pool, which would have saved an estimated $71,150. Trustees said that closing the pool, which is heated by a costly, antiquated system, would hurt aquatics programs at the school and throughout the district

Board members added, however, that they will seek to replace the pool-heating system by lobbying the city’s Redevelopment Agency for funds, since the school is considered a historic landmark, and asking help from booster clubs.

The board helped save psychologists, nurses and the pool by cutting 14.5% from non-personnel accounts, which pay for items ranging from utilities maintenance to paper, pencils and books.