SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO : Schools Slash Budget by $4.1 Million

Four employees will be laid off and class size will be increased by one under a budget-reduction plan approved by the Capistrano Unified School District board this week.

Eliminated next fall will be the district’s music program for kindergarten through third-grade students, along with its two teachers, according to the plan approved Monday night. The district’s director of facilities planning and a clerk in the personnel office will also lose their jobs.

The plan, which will slash $4.1 million from the district’s $113-million budget, will also eliminate field trips and fifth- and sixth-grade camp, and reduce the purchase of high school athletic equipment by 10%.

The plan, approved unanimously late Monday, takes effect July 1. Even with the cuts, the district will have to drain $3 million from its $7.3-million reserve, according to administration reports.

“On the balance, we have tried to serve the needs of the students and the classroom,” Board of Trustees President Paul B. Haseman said. “I don’t know if we did the job perfectly, but we did the best we could, making the cuts in a way that they will least affect students. But I fear that this is not the end, that eventually we are going to have to make more cuts.”

The cuts are necessary, district officials say, because of Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to reduce the state’s education budget by $2 billion.

Increasing average class size by one student will allow the district to absorb the estimated 1,000 new students expected to enroll next year without adding teachers. The move will save the district $1.8 million.

The district’s average class size varies from grade to grade, but is generally two to three students less than the Orange County average.

By eliminating the music program and laying off its two teachers, the district will save $186,000. The program, which teaches basics such as rhythm, gives the students specialized music instruction once a week for one semester each year. Music at those grades will be taught next school year by the students’ regular teachers.

The music program has four teachers, but two are certified to be regular schoolteachers and will be reassigned, said William Eller, assistant superintendent for instructional operations.

The district will cut an additional $77,000 by laying off Karl Krebs, facilities planning director. Krebs, a 37-year-old Mission Viejo resident who has been a district employee for one year, is in charge of planning the 10 new schools the district hopes to build in the next five years. His duties will be split among the remaining administrators.

“Nobody likes losing their job, but with the budget problems the state and district are having, I understand the necessity of it,” Krebs said. “You can’t balance the budget on the backs of the kids.”

Eliminating the personnel clerk’s position will save the district $28,300, and cutting the district’s camp program will save $425,000. In the camp program, fifth-graders spent a day at the Orange County Marine Institute at Dana Point Harbor, including an overnight stay on a ship and an overnight trip to an Orange County ranch, while sixth-graders spent a week at a San Bernardino Mountains camp. Eliminating field trips at all grade levels will save $113,000.