School Trustees Get an Earful on What <i> Not </i> to Cut in Budget : Education: At the end of a public hearing, the board is left where it started: wondering how to make the necessary $20.8-million reduction.

Dozens of speakers protesting $20.8 million in proposed salary and student program cuts tugged at the heartstrings of San Diego city schools trustees Tuesday night but offered few alternative solutions to the district’s budget problem.

At the end of more than two hours of public hearings, board members were left where they started the day: uncertain as to how they will tackle the necessity of slashing district offerings by July 1.

“We just haven’t yet focused on where we will” cut, Trustee Shirley Weber said during a break after the testimony.

But board members heard a litany of pleas about where not to cut, from speakers covering a wide spectrum of the reductions and eliminations submitted Monday by schools Supt. Tom Payzant.

“Will it be the monetary sacrifice or the human sacrifice?” parent Denise Winset asked in arguing that a proposed 17% cut in nurses, a reduction of $500,000, not be approved. Her 5-year-old son has severe spastic cerebral palsy and is able to attend school only because a nurse is available to monitor his physical well-being each day.

Dr. Laura Clapper of the pediatrics department at the Naval Hospital warned that cutbacks in school nurses would affect several special medical programs the Navy participates in with schools.

Taft Junior High ninth-grader Lori Vilvens, in an emotion-laden speech that elicited loud, sustained applause, credited her school nurse with taking her away from a drug-centered future by persuading her to overcome the effects of a home life with two drug-addicted brothers and a drug-addicted sister.

“I learned to trust the nurse,” Vilvens said.

Local artist Aida Mancillas warned that the proposed end to elementary music instruction, to save $832,000, will hurt economically poor children no matter their color.

“This is not about color, it’s about class,” Mancillas said in noting that she was initially asked to speak as a representative of the nonwhite community. “I can continue to buy my son the best arts money can buy . . . but I grew up in East Los Angeles, and if there had been no art and music in schools, I would not have been able to experience” many things such as dance and music.

Mira Mesa High parent Linda Humphrey asked that the board not carry out plans to cut the sports of golf, water polo, swimming and soccer, to save $200,000. “How about a citywide fund-raising, for athletics, art, music, so we don’t have to face this problem year after year after year?” she proposed.

Representatives from the district’s major labor unions demanded that there be no pay cuts, even though Payzant’s proposals call for a 1.6% salary slash, on top of the 1.07% in salary reductions already included in the $9.5 million in cuts made by the board last month. Those reductions would save more than $10 million.

Maryann Thomas, a financial clerk with the school district, warned trustees that morale would plummet further with salary cuts coming on top of increased workloads due to last year’s elimination of numerous job positions within administrative departments.

“We are dedicated and hard-working, and you want to cut our salaries,” she complained.

Hugh Boyle, president of the San Diego Teachers Assn., criticized Payzant and trustees for not sitting down with the unions and asking how the budget problem can be solved cooperatively--part of a new bargaining philosophy being tried this year--instead of unilaterally presenting the management position.

Trustee John De Beck said later that, no matter how you characterize the bargaining, “we have collective clashing interests, and it doesn’t matter what you call them.”

Payzant noted after the hearings that “each group made its presentation and left,” not waiting to listen to what proponents of nursing or bus drivers or career counselors had to say.

“They don’t realize that all of this is connected, that 85% of our budget is in people,” he said. “They say don’t cut programs, which means people, or don’t cut salaries, which means people. You can’t cut the magnitude (of the proposals) without affecting that 85%.”

Payzant proposes to raise class size by half a student; cut employee salaries by up to 2.6%; eliminate all supplementary English, elementary music, basic sex education and career counseling programs; severely reduce nurses, basic school counselors and night school police patrols, and cut golf, water polo, swimming and soccer.

Board members are divided over whether to balance the cuts between programs and pay cuts, as Payzant wants to do to try and preserve morale, or to put all of the reductions on pay cuts so that all classroom activities can be continued by paying employees less.

The proposed cuts, added to those already made, represent about $30 million, or almost 7% of the district’s $403 million for general operations and regular programs. The $20.8-million gap announced Monday comes after state financial planners discovered late last month that California will be short more than a billion dollars of the amount needed to continue funding public education at existing levels statewide.

Trustees will debate the budget next Tuesday. They plan to make a decision June 23.