FULLERTON : School District Stays in Good Fiscal Shape

Although many Orange County school districts are girding for possible cuts in teaching and administrative jobs for the 1992-93 school year, the Fullerton Joint Union High School District has not sent out a single layoff notice, has recently raised salaries and boasts a virtually balanced budget.

“We are on the right track,” said Christine Hoffman, principal of Buena Park High School. “It is nice to work in a district . . . where we don’t look for any program cuts, extracurricular cuts or layoff notices.”

Many county school districts sent out preliminary layoff notices to employees on March 15. Neighboring Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, for example, sent out more than 100 layoff notices to teachers and administrators in an effort to narrow a projected $7-million budget shortfall.

While most of the layoff notices in Placentia-Yorba Linda and other districts were sent merely to meet a state-mandated deadline and may not come to pass, officials in those districts said they showed the belt-tightening necessary because of the declining financial state in public schools.

But the Fullerton Joint Union High School District was “one of the few districts which didn’t give out any (layoff notices),” said Duane Clizbe, principal of La Vista High School. “When you can keep your people and have enough money to buy your supplies, well, then you are in pretty good shape.”

The Fullerton high school district, with about 11,800 students and a budget of more than $60 million, has a stable fiscal outlook, officials say, because of its conservative approach to spending and a healthy cash base built up and sustained since the mid-1980s.

In 1980, the district closed a high school and sold its property for about $9.5 million. In 1984, it sold property in Yorba Linda for another $2.5 million, and in 1985, the district won a lawsuit against the state for another $11 million when the state reneged on providing funds for special programs at the school, said Robert A. Singer, president of the district Board of Trustees.

“With all those items, we ended up with a multimillion-dollar source of funds,” Singer said. “We then asked ourselves what we could do of significance that will be used wisely for students on a continuing basis.”

Last month, the district completed a three-year contract agreement that will give employees and teachers a 4% pay raise this year.

“We traditionally have been very conservative,” said George West, assistant superintendent for business services. “We did not give large pay increases so that we could build a cushion. . . . Now we are able to give some of that back to teachers.”