FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Brochure and Video to Detail School Ills

The Fountain Valley School District, working with a group of parents and business people, will produce a brochure and accompanying videotape next month to explain the school budget to the community.

Officials hope the program will help people understand the district’s decisions to reduce staffing, among other cuts.

“It doesn’t make it any easier to take, but it will, we hope, project the district in a better light,” said Marc Ecker, assistant superintendent for community services.

The information materials will be produced by the Action Committee for Education, which includes representatives of parent groups of the district’s 11 schools, the Chamber of Commerce and the high school district.

The idea for the project came up last year as the district, faced with the same budget woes as many other school districts across the state, was forced to tighten its budget for staffing, school materials and teacher salaries.

Fountain Valley was forced to cut $435,000 from its $26-million budget. School psychologists were the most severely impacted by the cuts, according to officials.

The district expects to cut another $875,000 after the state education budget is approved.

Furthermore, teachers and administrators will not get a raise this year, continuing the trend of the last few years. District trustees have also approved a plan to charge fees for school busing programs to help offset transportation costs.

The video will be shown to parent and teacher groups. Among other things, it will explain the steady decline in funding to California’s public schools, Ecker said.

“We know that a lot of that is due to Proposition 13, the economy and the growing enrollment,” Ecker said. “We will show what happens when you continue to add new students and don’t add to the base revenue.”

Ecker said it is unlikely that public schools will receive substantial funding increases in the immediate future.

“My feeling is this is a long-term problem,” Ecker said. “It’s our hope that this will lead us to a better understanding of the situation.”