Trustees Vote to Cut Music, Sports, Others If Necessary : Schools: The board backs away from further salary cuts in its grueling search for a worst-case-scenario budget. The rest depends on Sacramento.

Backing away from further salary reductions to balance their budget, San Diego school trustees reluctantly voted Tuesday to eliminate some sports, music, counseling, supplemental writing, nursing, sex education and other programs if worst-case financial scenarios come true.

Trustees finally completed a list of more than $30 million in cuts they will have to make if estimates of California’s budget shortfall prove correct and state funding to San Diego falls short that amount.

They itemized their reductions in phases, hoping that the most deleterious of the actions--completely wiping out elementary music, sex education and supplemental English while increasing class size from kindergarten through third grade--will not have to be carried out.

Few if any decisions during a marathon seven-hour session were unanimous, with 3-2 and 4-1 votes common as board members split across the map depending on the particular program up for slicing.

Their mental exhaustion showed in a final series of votes on a list of $4.6 million in cuts to be made only in the worst case--with Trustee Sue Braun pleading for another two weeks to somehow find the amount in areas away from the classroom, despite more than two months of fruitless searches for less painful alternatives.

“We still haven’t found those dollars,” Trustee Shirley Weber said for the board majority--including John De Beck and Susan Davis--that bit the final bullet.

“We’ve all combed the budget. . . . It’s all very frustrating for the public (not) to have us identify the options. I’d wait another two weeks if I knew there was $4 million somewhere” else in programs that members were willing to cut, Weber said.

The only unanimity came in the absence of any trustee willing to go beyond the 2.67% in across-the-board salary reductions previously voted, even though each additional 1% would save about $4.2 million that otherwise must be taken out of programs.

Although board Chairman Ann Armstrong had suggested the possibility late last week in calling for Tuesday’s special meeting, she and other trustees backed off on the idea Tuesday after more than 500 teachers packed the education center auditorium to rail against further wage slashes.

The board has now identified about $30.6 million in cuts, including salary reductions that total about $11.4 million. Top administrators believe that the San Diego Unified School District, the nation’s eighth-largest urban district, will need to cut about $30 million, based on the present state of the Sacramento budget debate.

The best-case scenario might require only about about $22 million in cuts. For that reason, the board Tuesday placed the expected cuts in phases, with the hope that some would be unnecessary.

The list as agreed to by trustees:

* An initial cut of $9.3 million, with big-ticket items including a one-time savings of $4 million from changing the way health insurance premiums are paid, $1.7 million in funds available to individual schools for materials and projects, $1 million in textbook purchases, $600,000 in central office administration and $300,000 in non-classroom teaching positions.

* A Phase 2 cut of about $10.2 million. Among the major cuts are salary rollbacks of $7.1 million; $555,000 in maintenance and business services; $489,000 in secondary counselors; $388,000 in career counselors, eliminating that program totally; $200,000 in high school sports, eliminating water polo, swimming, golf and soccer; $500,000 in high school clerical positions; $463,000 in sex and drug education, and $231,000 in elementary music.

* A Phase 3 cut of about $6.3 million, including $4.2 million in salary cuts previously passed and a savings of $2 million by increasing class size by half a student in grades four through 12.

* A final Phase 4 slash of $4.6 million, which would end all elementary music, saving $600,000; end sex education, saving another $463,000; complete class size increases from kindergarten to third grade, cutting $747,000; end supplemental secondary English teachers, for $1.8 million; cut maintenance another $444,000, and cut 10 nurses, for $500,000.

“We only do (the Phase 4) as a worst-case scenario,” Trustee Davis said, adding that the board has an obligation to give employees affected by the potential cuts as much time as they can to bid on other jobs within the district.

About 20 special music and career counselors could lose their jobs, but the other 110 teachers whose positions are affected in all of the phases will be placed in other vacancies, Supt. Tom Payzant said. About 50 secretaries, clerks and other non-teaching personnel could be laid off depending on seniority and retirement factors.

“I think everyone realized today there was a point of no turning back,” Payzant said after Tuesday’s meeting. “Things still depend, to a great deal, on what happens in Sacramento, but we’ll be happy to come in at $30 million or anything less.”

Payzant expressed relief that the board backed down from proposals to take more than a third of the total budget cuts from employee salaries.

“I think folks wanted to see overall fairness in the cuts,” he said, adding that the balance of program and employee reductions will make his negotiations with labor unions easier to handle.

The threat of labor trouble in the event salaries had been slashed up to 5%--a figure raised earlier this month by some trustees--was made clear during public testimony earlier Tuesday.

“Hell hath no fury like a teacher who feels he or she is being screwed by their school district,” teacher Diann Fletcher, a San Diego Teachers Assn. officer, told trustees.

“We’re all willing to take our fair share, if” things are fair, she said, summarizing almost an hour of testimony by colleagues.