Schools Get Poor Grades in Residents’ Report Card : Services: Newport Beach respondents to poll give education lowest score on list of government roles, citing crowded classrooms, cuts in art, music and athletics.

Marion Jacobson was stunned last fall when she heard at back-to-school night that Lincoln Elementary’s two second-grade classes had to share one set of textbooks.

April Rizman shakes her head each morning when she has to put her 6-year-old on a bus to school in Newport Heights because the classrooms just a block away are overcrowded.

And Jim Baldwin is appalled that there are 39 students in his daughter’s first-grade class.

That’s what these Newport Beach residents were thinking when they told the Times Orange County Poll they are “not satisfied” with the public schools. In all, 13% of the respondents said they felt the same way, giving schools the lowest score on the poll’s list of services offered in Newport Beach.

“One of the reasons people move here is because they think we have great schools,” said Baldwin, a computer salesman who has lived on Balboa Island for eight years. “I don’t think we have bad schools now, but it’s going downhill. They’re cutting programs . . . (and) the school board is out of whack. . . . But the main thing is, I think, the quality has gone down.”

For months, parents and teachers in Newport Beach have been protesting at school board meetings about overcrowded classrooms, supply shortages, cutbacks in programs for art, music and athletics as well as recent staff and teacher layoffs. The schools were also stung recently by a scandal in which a former top financial officer pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly $4 million.

Poll respondents who criticized the schools cited the same problems.

The poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates, contacted 600 adult residents of Newport Beach during a three-day period ending Jan. 30. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%.

In the poll, about a quarter of the respondents said they are “very satisfied” with the public schools compared to 13% who said they are “not satisfied.” But the rating for schools was still lower than other city features such as police protection, recreational facilities, stores, restaurants and entertainment outlets. About a third of the respondents said they are somewhat satisfied with the schools.

Even with the problems, though, the poll found most Newport Beach residents do not consider schools to be a major problem. Just 4% cited the education system when asked to name the biggest problem facing their city, ranking it fifth behind city government, traffic, growth and the economy.

The school system’s grades in the Orange County poll were also better than those found by other surveys conducted recently around the state and the nation.

In a 1991 Times Poll of California residents, only 13% said their local schools are excellent, with 32% saying they were adequate, and 48% saying they were inadequate or very poor. A national survey conducted last summer found that 15% of Americans believe their schools are excellent, while 43% think the schools are good, 27% fair and 11% poor.

Eileen Cirillo, whose sixth child will graduate from local schools this spring, was among those who are happy with Newport’s school system. She said the individual attention her son received at the district’s alternative high school heightened her confidence in the system.

“I’ve worked in the schools, helping out as a parent doing different things, I’m really pleased with the performances of the teachers,” Cirillo said. “The school was twice as large when we started. We’ve seen it diminished as far as enrollment, but they’ve kept it up as far as programs. It’s a good system. I believe in it.”

Baldassare said the negative response in the Orange County poll was still surprisingly high for such an affluent community where education is a high priority. Some of the respondents unhappy with the schools also said the city has high standards for education.

“(We are) a town that feels as though we are the creme de la creme, and yet we don’t have orchestras in our school because we can’t afford it,” complained May Marlow, 65. “A community like this should be able to afford the best that we need for our students, and we don’t seem to be getting it. Too many people are sending their kids to private schools.”

Indeed, nearly one out of five Newport Beach students are enrolled in private schools, about double the percentage in Orange County overall and nationwide.

“I don’t think we’re getting the leadership we once had at the district level or at the school level,” said William Thomas, a Brea schoolteacher who has lived in Newport Beach since 1976 and who named public schools as the city’s top problem in the poll. “They have an aging faculty that has been through some tough times and I think they’re just fading out.”

Much of the concern was aimed at school administrators. Asked how they feel about various government leaders, about a third of those polled said they have little or no confidence in school district officials. The school administration scored lower than the mayor, the City Council and the Police Department.

A third of the respondents also said they have some confidence in school administrators while 11% said they have a lot of confidence.

School district leaders said they were neither surprised nor upset by the responses found in the Times Orange County Poll. School Board President Roderick H. MacMillian and other school officials noted that public schools across the state and nation are suffering an image problem and suggested that Newport’s problems are, in part, merely a reflection of those trends.

Schools Get Dubious Marks

Residents have relatively little confidence in school district officials, and only one in four is very satisfied with the city’s public schools. But Newport Beach high school students consistently score 10% to 13% higher than students statewide on the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a widely watched indication of educational attainment.

Confidence in Newport-Mesa officials A lot: 11% Some: 33% Little: 19% None: 15% Don’t know: 22% *

Satisfaction with public schools Very: 23% Somewhat: 32% Not: 13% Don’t know: 32% *

Average SAT scores

Newport California Beach 1987-88 908 996 1988-89 906 995 1989-90 903 1,019 1990-91 897 989 1991-92 900 1,021

Source: Times Orange County Survey, Newport-Mesa Unified School District