Schools in North County Face Cuts

Cuts in classroom aides, an end to music programs, less assistance for children in need of reading and other help--that’s the sobering forecast for school districts across North County for the 1992-93 school year.

Even with months to go before the current school year ends, districts are already slashing funding needed to maintain the services beyond June and preparing notices of possible layoffs for hundreds of employees.

And, in contrast to previous years, the initial funding forecasts from Sacramento, which provides 90% of a typical district’s budget, may prove to be more optimistic than final figures this summer. Even in the best-case scenarios, districts will require more money than the state can come up with.

Almost $3.4 million was cut from the budget the past weekend by trustees of the Escondido Union Elementary District. Gone next fall will be the music program, 15 specialists who help students having learning problems and 41 instructional aides in the program for gifted students. As many as 50 teachers and 110 other employees could face the budget ax.

The Fallbrook Elementary district earlier this month dropped all five assistant principals, all of its special first-grade classroom assistants, its music instruction, its curriculum planner and its ecology program at a rural one-room school in De Luz. The $1.4-million cut, with the loss of about 20 positions, also means less library help for students and less maintenance and repair at schools.

San Marcos Unified district trustees will be asked early next month to send out 50 to 100 notices of possible layoffs and pare costs by $2.5 million. That means the loss of a popular elementary reading program, numerous administrative posts, counseling and student psychological help, its Welcome Center transition program for immigrant students and its bilingual aides.

Other districts are lining up figures for school boards that must bite the bullet. The Escondido Union High district projects that a $2-million cut will hit nurses, librarians and counselors hardest. Oceanside estimates a shortfall of $1 million to $2 million, and Carlsbad could be close to $1 million short.

This time, children will be affected much more directly, because most districts already trimmed non-teaching positions last year and say they can’t avoid touching the classroom this time.

“Kids are right in the line of fire this time,” said Jennifer Jeffries, superintendent of the seven-school Fallbrook district. “All of us (in North County) are looking at another 6% or so, on top of the 6% we all cut last year.”

The figures seem small when contrasted with the $25-million cut last year at the giant San Diego Unified School District. But they represent a bigger portion of the smaller districts’ budgets.

“I lose five assistant principals and two lead teachers, and that translates into fewer caring adults for students and their parents, especially the so-called regular kids in the middle,” Jeffries said.

That aspect especially worries Escondido Elementary district board president Kathy Marler.

“The student being hurt the most is the average child in the middle,” Marler said, whose programs receive no special state funding as do special education and the gifted. For example, Escondido eliminated its learning assistance specialists who work in small groups at each of the district’s 15 schools with students having minor academic problems.

“We’ve got to be more creative,” Rose School Principal Kathy Eisler said, “by trying to bring in outside agencies to help with family counseling, by bringing in as many volunteers and parents to help teachers deal with all the diverse students in their classes.

“This places more burdens on the classroom teachers, who still feel responsible to meet every single need of every single child.”

Fallbrook’s Jeffries will try to find a corporate angel to salvage the De Luz ecology program, a longtime favorite with students and their parents.

District superintendents lament that they have no choice. Although Gov. Pete Wilson proposes a 7% fund increase for kindergarten through 12th grade, the actual increase in regular, unrestricted funds is less than half a percent, Jeffries said.

The rest is targeted to maintain retirement-plan funding for teachers, allow for enrollment growth and pay for such programs as those for preschoolers and the gifted, Jeffries said.

A typical district faces annual cost increases of 4% or more in utilities, required step pay increases, health insurance and related personnel and maintenance cost increases--none of which is provided for by Wilson.

Robert Fisher, Escondido elementary superintendent, warned that even the current level of reductions might not be enough, given the optimistic assumptions behind Wilson’s proposal.

“We have to assume that the governor will be successful in making (suggested) cuts in welfare and health with the Legislature,” Fisher said. “If he is not, then there’s going to be an even greater impact on us. These (recent) cuts by us may be nothing more than the first wave.”

But Fisher said he cannot, in good conscience, argue for an even bigger slice of the state pie that Wilson now wants to target for education.

“If there were the extra funds in Sacramento, you would hear a lot of criticism from me as to the necessity for cuts,” Fisher said.

“But this goes beyond the state budget. The economy in California is not good, and we in the schools are just following suit as to what is going on in the private sector in terms of having to make reductions.”

The consequences are nevertheless unpleasant.

In Escondido, there will be no more field trips, no music, fewer assistant principals, cuts in planning for an improved primary grades curriculum and an end to a special-opportunity school for students in trouble. The district will no longer have an assistant maintenance director, a contracts director, a head librarian, a special education director or a community relations coordinator.

In San Marcos, there will be cuts throughout academic programs, including reading labs, chorus, special education, libraries, and new curricula.