NEWPORT BEACH : Volunteers Pitch In to Help High School

Visit the Corona del Mar High School front office on a midweek morning and there could be a former chief executive officer of a big business or a retired dentist behind the secretary’s desk answering phones.

Or wander out to the school grounds and neighbors may be picking up garbage, washing windows or doing carpentry fix-ups on tattered school buildings.

The workers are not recession-weary job seekers, but volunteers lending a hand to the school, which like other schools in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District is cutting services to balance its beleaguered budget.

The Kiwanis Club here has sent volunteers and dollars to the school to help it weather district budget cuts, which have reduced custodial staff and general expenditures.

“I was over there one day and the place looked a little disheveled, to say the least,” said Jack Geerlings, who heads the school committee of the Kiwanis board. “We’re trying to help in a small way.”

On Saturday, the group hopes to come out in numbers with school board and community members to do a major sweep of the campus by picking up trash, cleaning up and doing repairs.

It will be the first of monthly cleanup days that the group is coordinating with the high school’s Key Club, the youth arm of Kiwanis, Geerlings said.

The group’s hope, said Geerlings, is that other communities will follow their example and help other schools in the district during the budget crunch.

The district faces a $3.6-million shortfall. This year, the custodial staff was reduced to help balance the budget, and 80 additional employees and a number of programs are slated to be cut to balance the 1992-93 budget.

So far, about a dozen group members are volunteering time to the school on a regular basis, either by being an office aide or by helping with the cleanup programs.

Also, the group has bought about $1,000 in needed materials for the school--including some banners and a walkie-talkie set--and found businesses to donate such supplies as copy paper and toner, which have become too expensive for the school to buy.

The group will be at the school library Saturday morning, and volunteers are welcome.