$348-Million Shortfall for Schools Seen : Education: The figure is $100 million more than projected and could get worse, official warns.

Still reeling from budget cuts that have slashed salaries along with hundreds of jobs, the chief financial officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District said Monday that the district will start the next school year with a shortfall of at least $348 million.

In a special presentation, Robert Booker told Los Angeles school board members that expenditures will once again greatly exceed the district’s income in 1992-93, and that the estimated shortfall--almost $100 million more than was projected last month--may continue to increase as more information on state funding becomes available.

“This is a terrible budget year facing the district,” Booker said. “It’s the worst we have seen. . . . I don’t see the picture getting any better. The picture’s probably going to get worse.”

A critical factor in the district’s fiscal picture is the state budget, which supplies much of the districts funds. An update on the governor’s budget for next year will be issued in mid-May, but district officials are not optimistic, noting that the state may be forced to make cuts in education and other areas to cover its own projected multibillion-dollar shortfall. Booker said the district’s self-insurance fund and repair and maintenance program are two areas that could be trimmed. But he noted that the majority of savings will have to come from reductions in regular programs and services paid for out of the district’s general fund.

“The lion’s share of this shortfall is going to need to come from the general program, which is a $2-billion expenditure,” said Booker. Noting that a large percentage of general fund monies are spent on such items as salaries and benefits, Booker added that “in the absence of additional revenue, there is going to need to be some reduction in personnel costs. . . . There’s no getting around it.”

Supt. Bill Anton will bring recommendations for cuts later this month.

A decline in state funding, as well as in lottery income and interest earnings, are primary reasons for the projected shortfall, Booker said. Such factors caused district officials to increase class size, impose employee pay cuts, and tap district reserve funds in order to make more than $1 billion in spending reductions over the last four years.

Although the lottery has in the past yielded as much as $118 million per year for the district, revenue may drop as low as $53 million for the next school year, Booker said. Also, interest income accrued by the district has become “almost nonexistent” because of low cash balances, Booker said.

After such dismal fiscal predictions, some board members expressed doubts that the district could afford any new education programs.

During Monday’s meeting, the Board of Education unanimously approved a major plan to strengthen and expand the district’s multicultural education and human relations efforts. Despite her vote in favor of the plan, board member Roberta Weintraub wondered when the district could afford to pay for it.

“This district doesn’t have the dollars to fund basic things in the district, let alone new programs,” Weintraub said.

The five-pronged plan, outlined in a report titled “Educating For Diversity,” calls for measures ranging from the establishment of human relations plans at each school to requiring ethnic-study courses for all secondary students. District officials did not give estimates on how much the programs will cost.

Meanwhile, the board also received a report on the success of various programs to reduce the harm of segregation on district children.

Elaine Lindheim--an evaluator who helped examine data on the programs from the last decade--said many of them, including magnet schools and a school readiness program for preschool pupils and their parents, have raised academic achievement.

But students in the Capacity Adjustment Program, an involuntary busing program that sends children from overcrowded campuses to less-crowded schools elsewhere, performed “markedly below” students who went to schools in their neighborhood.

The report also found that the district’s “Ten Schools Program”--a novel five-year effort to raise the median student achievement level in reading and math to the 50th percentile or higher at 10 elementary schools--did not reach its interim goal for last year.

However, scores in reading, math and language rose dramatically, with students at the 10 schools scoring higher than comparison schools at all grade levels, and higher than schools throughout the district on certain grade and subject levels.

In other developments, board member Leticia Quezada introduced a motion asking district officials to stop spending money on contracts for public relations services. The district spent about $250,000 in the last year on an opinion poll and public relations consultants to help repair its battered image.