Wilson Launches Campaign to Counteract Criticism : Politics: Ads attacking plan to curb kindergarten enrollment prompt caustic letter to teachers’ union.

Stung by television commercials that are critical of his proposal to block more than 100,000 4-year-olds from entering kindergarten on schedule in the fall, Gov. Pete Wilson has launched a determined defense of the plan with a caustic letter to the California Teachers Assn.

The Republican governor’s counterattack on the kindergarten commercial comes as his aides concede that public support for the governor’s position has fallen despite an intense, two-week effort to sway public opinion in favor of his plan to cut $2 billion from the $25-billion education budget he put forward in January.

It also comes as a key Senate Republican and an influential Assembly Democrat are preparing today to propose a compromise spending plan that would cut only half as much from the schools as Wilson has proposed. The plan, devised by state Sen. Frank Hill of Whittier and Democratic Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento, is expected to receive a favorable reception but not a complete endorsement from Wilson’s office.

The fight over school funding is at the center of the budget deadlock, which has caused the state to go 16 days into the fiscal year without a spending plan. Out of cash and unable to borrow money, the state is paying its bills and employees with IOUs.

Wilson’s plan would give schools almost the same amount in the coming year that they had in the academic year just ended. But with 200,000 more students scheduled to enter the schools in the fall, that would mean a sharp drop in money per student. The governor’s plan also is $2 billion below what the schools were counting on, based on what the governor proposed in January.

The governor proposes to minimize the effect of the cuts on the basic education program by more than tripling community college fees and shifting that money to the the primary and secondary schools. He also wants to cut the funds for special programs--for the gifted, for poor readers and others--and allow school districts to decide for themselves how to spend what is left.

But the most controversial element of his proposal is the idea of telling 110,000 4-year-olds that they cannot enter kindergarten on schedule in the fall. Wilson would do this by requiring kindergartners to be 5 years old by Sept. 1. Under current law they must turn 5 by Dec. 1. The move would cut kindergarten classes by 25% and save $335 million in the coming year.

Critics of Wilson’s plan seized on the kindergarten issue as a way to translate the huge numbers and abstract negotiations involved in budget politics into something that the average voter can understand.

The Education Coalition, which includes the teachers’ unions and groups of school board members and administrators, produced a television commercial picturing a little girl crying as she is denied entrance to kindergarten because of Wilson’s proposed policy.

The ad, which urges viewers to call Wilson’s office, followed similar ads in newspapers and on radio and ran Thursday through Sunday. A new version featuring a Latino child is being aired on Spanish language television in Los Angeles.

A Wilson spokesman said calls and letters generated by the commercial are “breaking about even” for and against the kindergarten proposal. Support for Wilson’s overall budget strategy, according to his press office, was running 3 to 1 in favor of the governor before the ad began running. But now that advantage has slipped to 3 to 2.

Seeking to regain the initiative, Wilson fired off a letter to the California Teachers Assn. accusing the state’s largest teachers’ union of “gross deception” and “hypocrisy” and calling on them to pull the commercial off the air.

Wilson said the CTA’s “ethical and professional credibility” has been sacrificed because the teachers are opposing his proposal now even though the association supported a similar plan in 1985.

“Only by putting a halt to this campaign can California teachers reassure the people of California that they place a higher value on the quality of educational achievement for our children than crass political games,” Wilson wrote. “It is not the historic mission of educators to engage in slickly dishonest newspaper, radio and television ads that exploit children and manipulate their parents.”

He followed up the letter with personal calls arguing the same points with the editors of the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

But material provided by Wilson with his letter shows that the 1985 proposal the teachers supported, even if enacted, would not have been implemented for three years after the law was changed, to give parents time to adjust. And even then the eligibility date would have been shifted one month each year for three years to avoid causing a large, one-time drop in school enrollments.

Ron McPeck, vice president of the CTA, said Wilson’s proposal would be unfair to parents and children primed to begin kindergarten in September. “At this late date, it just does not make sense to propose this kind of program,” he said.

But Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s secretary for education and child development, said the governor’s kindergarten proposal is based on “sound policy” and is being exploited by the teachers’ union.

“They’re using this as a club to show that Pete Wilson is mean-spirited, that he’s trying to balance the budget on the backs of little kids,” DiMarco said. “It’s clearly a political ploy.”