SAN CLEMENTE : ‘Magnet’ School May Lose Its Pull

Outside the door of Room 31 of Las Palmas Elementary School hangs a bright, lime-green sign with purple letters that reads, “Welcome to Music.”

Inside, under the direction of teacher Gail Carnahan, ebullient third-graders play “The Banana Boat Song” on keyboards and later perform a jazz tune using two types of xylophones.

“I like playing music,” said curly-haired Nick Brown, 9. “I like the keyboard, and I’m getting good at it. I like the way music sounds.”

But the chance to play tunes in the school’s music lab, one of just three of its kind in the state, will be virtually eliminated if the strapped Capistrano Unified School District follows through with plan to cut $140,000 from the school’s funding in next year’s budget.

The prospect of the cuts has cast an ominous shadow over the close-knit group of teachers, pupils and parents at the popular and prestigious school, which for the past five years has served as the district’s “magnet” school, with specialized, hands-on programs in music, science, reading and computers.

The cuts would result in the school losing most of the unique programs taught by specially trained teachers, including Carnahan, the only full-time music teacher in the district who is based at a single school. Carnahan will be reassigned to teach in a regular classroom if the cut is approved.

“She’s irreplaceable,” Principal Linda Purrington said. “She is professionally trained, and we don’t have anyone else on staff who could do what she does.”

Also reassigned to a regular classroom would be the school’s full-time science teacher, Linda Wickstrom, who runs a science lab fully stocked with microscopes, test tubes, dissecting pans, beakers and calibrated cylinders.

“At the elementary-school level, science is quite often taught from textbooks as fact,” she said. “Students look forward to coming into the lab, because they know they will be learning by doing with hands-on activities.”

By offering the special programs as well as a choice of attending school for nine months or year round, the school has attracted hundreds of pupils from throughout the district and helped to integrate what had been a predominantly Latino pupil population.

“We have a mixed population here, and there are many students who have great needs,” Purrington said. “These programs have really helped to equalize opportunity for all kids.”

Among those programs is the school’s fully staffed Language Resources Center, which has helped hundreds of the pupils improve their English. That program would also be severely affected.

“This program provides extra help so that the students (who speak limited English) can acquire skills like their peers,” Purrington said. “With the cuts, more responsibility would fall on the classroom teacher.”

Since becoming the district’s model school in 1987, the enrollment at Las Palmas has grown from 350 to 807 pupils. Half of the children attend school year round, with three-week breaks every two months, while the other half attends on the traditional September-to-June calendar.

Dozens of parents lobbied district trustees this month to oppose further cuts at the school, which also absorbed a $100,000 slash last year.

“It really saddens me that something so valuable and workable might be destroyed,” said Barbara Starr, president of the school’s PTA. “Everyone is going to pull together to try and keep this school as wonderful as it is, but there just won’t be the educational opportunities that there were before.”