ORANGE : School District Faces More Cutbacks

The prospect of more cutbacks and layoffs looms over the Orange Unified School District as board members learned last week that they must slice another $480,000 from the proposed $107-million budget.

The school board will discuss which programs or departments will be targeted to help balance the budget at a special meeting at 7 tonight.

Because of reductions in state funding, the district has already slashed $11.5 million from budgets over the last three years. Those previous cuts resulted in layoffs of teachers and classified personnel and increased class size.

“What faces us now is literally scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said Joyce Capelle, the district’s chief financial officer.

The possibility of more rollbacks was met with disapproval. David Reger, head of the teachers union, promised stiff opposition to layoffs.

“We are willing to fight tooth and nail to protect our students, our schools and our livelihood,” Reger told the board Thursday night.

Mark Rona, an outspoken critic of the school board and teacher at El Modena High School, also urged the board not to initiate cuts in teaching staff.

“We just can’t lay people off,” said Rona, who distributed a districtwide letter last month harshly critical of the new board. “We’ll lay off so many people we won’t have a school district.”

Becky Mayer, president of the classified employees’ union, said the board should eliminate perks--such as car allowances to administrators--before considering any more layoffs.

In other action, the board selected Maureen Aschoff as president and Robert H. Viviano as vice president.