Teachers Ponder a Lose-Lose Situation on Budget : Education: Union is polling its members on whether they want a pay cut or to work longer hours in a shorter school year. District faces severe cutbacks.

To Lila Dawson-Weber, it is a “lesser of two evils” dilemma.

Should teachers such as herself let the cash-starved Los Angeles Unified School District burrow deep into salaries and benefits to make up a massive budget shortfall? Or should they endorse a drastic plan that would chop 17 days from the academic year--and from their salaries--but leave them free to spend those three weeks as they please?

Neither choice is particularly palatable.

“It’s not a question in this case of what is better--it’s whether you’d rather be shot or stabbed or poisoned,” said Dawson-Weber, a special education instructor who has taught at Robert Fulton Junior High School in Van Nuys for 28 years. “We’re going to lose economically and in other ways, no matter what.”

Teachers throughout the district are making their choices this week as the Los Angeles teachers union polls its members on shortening the school year.

A sharply divided school board voted Monday to ask state officials for a waiver to shave 17 days off the 180-day academic year. However, permission from Sacramento, if received next week, could be moot if United Teachers-Los Angeles rejects the proposal.

The recommendation by Supt. Bill Anton would not decrease the overall instructional time because the district would lengthen the school day by about half an hour. District officials estimate that shortening the school year by a little more than three weeks would save about $160 million in teacher and staff salaries. The district faces cuts of $400 million to $600 million next year.

Opinion among teachers on the issue is mixed, partly because the UTLA leadership, in a departure from usual practice, has not issued a recommendation to its rank and file. But union President Helen Bernstein has said that administrative spending should be cut before adopting such drastic measures.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re undermining the entire foundation. We’re going to have a Third World education system here very soon,” said Marti Sutherland, an English teacher at James Monroe High School in North Hills. “It’s not being done because it’s educationally viable. It’s being done to save money.”

L.H. Foster, who is UTLA chapter chairman at Jordan High School in Watts, said more than 85% of the school’s faculty were against the waiver request as of Thursday morning.

“I’m not sure what the priority is, educating the students or keeping people on the hill,” Foster said, referring to the issue of cutting administrative positions.

“It’s another way of decreasing our salaries, decreasing education for our students,” said Foster, who has taught at Jordan 27 years. “We’re not doing a great job at 180 days. It seems that they’d try to keep these students in school.”

Although she disagrees with the plan, Rosemary Sheridan of Robert Frost Junior High School in Granada Hills said she will most likely vote to allow the district to explore the waiver option with the state.

“If it is that drastic,” she said of the projected deficit, “then I say they ought to have the right to ask, even if I disagree.”

Loren Drake, a teacher at Fairfax High, said he had not decided whether to support the district’s waiver request. He said there are still too many unanswered questions, including whether the salary teachers would lose would be restored.

One thing he said he was sure of was that another drastic change will probably make teachers’ jobs much harder.

“I’ve been here at Fairfax for seven years and it’s getting tougher and tougher,” said the biology teacher. “My classes are getting large. It’s getting harder to do labs, to have control of the kids.”

He doubted that the extra minutes tacked onto the school day would compensate for the lost days. “It may help a science teacher (by giving them) more time to do labs. But in some classes that are not activity-oriented, I think the students will become restless.”

Forty-one of the district’s 625 schools operate on the shorter, 163-day calendar, known officially as Concept 6, because it enables them to accommodate more students on a year-round basis. Teachers there have said they appreciate the longer school periods, which allow them to delve more deeply into their subjects. UTLA also has supported the idea of a longer school day as being more sound from an educational standpoint.

The potential calendar change has spawned confusion among administrators and parents, who are wondering how to plan for the school year that begins July 1.

“It means we’re making several kinds of schedules, several kinds of master plans, several kinds of contingencies. We don’t even know the first day of school,” said Barbara Garry, Reseda High School assistant principal.

Some parents are worried about greater child-care needs and eroding school quality.

“This isn’t a change that’s being made for the benefit of the students,” said Lee Alpert, a Northridge parent of two. “This is a change that’s being made purely on the basis of economics, which means it’s to the detriment of the students.

“Where is it going to end?”

Times staff writer Charisse Jones contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

The proposal to shave 17 days off the academic year was spurred by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s escalating fiscal crisis, considered by some officials to be the worst in the history of the nation’s second-largest school system. The district is required by law to close its $400-million budget gap--which, some officials predict, could rise as high as $600 million--by the end of the month. Supt. Bill Anton’s proposal to trim the school year requires state approval and is among the most drastic money-saving measures introduced by him last month. The State Board of Education is scheduled to consider the district’s request for permission to shorten the school year at a meeting Thursday. The issue is also subject to negotiation with the district’s employee unions.