O.C. Officials Keep Prop. 187 on Hold : Reaction: ‘Wait and see,’ say schools, health and social service agencies. Little will change soon.

Orange County school, health and social service officials hurried Wednesday to spread a “wait-and-see” message about Proposition 187, trying to reassure illegal immigrant families and others that little would change in coming weeks as the sweeping measure is challenged in court.

The county Social Services Agency--which distributes welfare payments, food stamps and Medi-Cal benefits to the poor--was flooded with phone calls from people who feared their aid would be cut off immediately, as the new law mandates. But agency workers had little concrete information to offer.

“We’ve checked with the state and they told us they’ve had staff working on policy changes and will issue guidelines soon. Until they do, we will follow existing policies,” said Larry Leaman, the county’s director of social services.

Medical officials, too, said they were holding off on enforcing the initiative, which denies non-emergency health care, social services and public education to illegal immigrants. It was overwhelmingly approved by voters Tuesday.

“As far as we are concerned it’s business as usual,” said Len Foster, the county’s deputy director of public health, who spent most of Wednesday at the 17th Street clinic in Santa Ana. “We are continuing to provide services to all comers, as we did yesterday.”

School administrators in areas with the highest immigrant populations reported no dips in attendance Wednesday. Officials scrambled to combat jitters over the passage of the initiative by sending letters to parents promising that teachers would not report students to immigration officials.

Some school officials took to their public address systems or organized schoolwide assemblies where students vented their feelings, emphasizing that regardless of court action, the school provisions of the initiative are not slated to take effect until Jan. 1.

“School has, and will be, a place where you’ll get an education. We are not the Immigration and Naturalization Service,” La Quinta High School Principal Mitch Thomas said over the PA system, as students rushed to class before the late bell Wednesday morning. “We are educators. Continue to come to school.”

At the county’s largest district, Santa Ana Unified, interim superintendent Don Champlin said: “We’re not making any changes in anything we’re doing.”

“Keep your children in our schools,” Santa Ana’s school board told parents in a statement approved during an election night meeting and distributed throughout the district Wednesday. “This has been an emotional, divisive issue that has confused many people. We now need to put those feelings aside and keep children in the secure, nurturing environment of our schools.”

Meanwhile, police on tactical alert for civil disturbances, including officers patrolling Santa Ana streets on horseback in case demonstrations became unruly, found little to do Wednesday.

High school and college students staged a handful of small rallies around the county, but most drew just a few dozen people, in contrast to the hundreds who walked out of classes in the days before the election.

“Orange County voted overwhelmingly for 187, but we want to show that in Orange County there is opposition,” said David Rojas, 22, who helped organize a noontime rally at the Civic Center in Santa Ana that drew about 50 people. “The struggle is going to continue, not just in the courts--that’s going to be one front--but also in the streets and in the schools.”

Day laborers who gather alongside Laguna Canyon Road each day seeking jobs said their ranks were thinned Wednesday by the passage of Proposition 187.

“It’s scary now,” said one Santa Ana resident who has been here for five years without a green card. Determined to stay in the United States, the man said he is worried about getting medical care for his wife, who is six months pregnant, and his children.

“I want to stay here. I don’t want to go back to Mexico,” he said. “It is nice here. I love America.”

At schools throughout Orange County, Latino students lamented the measure’s passage.

“The pledge of allegiance ends with the words ‘with liberty and justice for all.’ It doesn’t say ‘with liberty and justice for white people,’ ” 14-year-old Wendi Larsen said during a lunchtime discussion at Saddleback High in Santa Ana.

Latino students at Golden West College who met before classes Wednesday said they will work with larger Latino groups to fight the measure in court and to get legal immigrants more involved in the political process.

At a lunchtime discussion involving about 40 students and staff, Rancho Santiago College student Patty Ceja, 18, said, “It’s hard to know what the future will bring. Is everyone going to get kicked out of school? What’s going to happen?”

School and college officials said nothing drastic is likely to happen--at least for a while.

The state Department of Education issued a statement Wednesday reminding school districts that the new law provides for no changes in school policy until Jan. 1. A San Francisco judge issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday preventing schools from implementing the measure.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a federal district judge presiding over a legal challenge brought by civil rights groups, ordered that he be notified of any “substantive” enforcement of the initiative prior to a court hearing he scheduled for next Wednesday. But spokesmen for Wilson and Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said they would proceed in implementing the non-education portions of the initiative.

“We have no administrative plans at this point to begin implementation,” said Nilane Lee, president of the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees. “We’re adopting a wait and see and hope attitude.”

The state memo advises school districts to carefully consider the legal and fiscal implications before enforcing the initiative. Civil rights groups have promised to sue school administrators who attempt to report illegal immigrants, and the federal government has threatened to cut off all funding to schools that follow Proposition 187.

Orange County’s 27 school districts received $69.4 million in federal funds during the 1993-94 school year, according to the county Department of Education. In some school districts--Anaheim, Buena Park, Centralia, Fountain Valley, La Habra, Savanna and Westminster elementary districts, and Garden Grove and Santa Ana Unified--that money comprised more than 5% of the district’s total general fund budget.

“That money is what gives us the resources to provide extra help to kids who have some deficiencies in learning,” said Meliton Lopez, superintendent of the Anaheim City Elementary District. “I would miss it. It would be a detriment to children.”

Most federal dollars go to programs that help disadvantaged students, including special education and bilingual classes, drug abuse and gang prevention programs, and free and reduced-price meals for poor children.

“That’s hard to see,” Lopez said, “to see kids not eat.”

But administrators are confident the federal government will not soon take its money from California schools.

Asked how much federal funding Santa Ana Unified could lose, Champlin said: “The odds of it being implemented to affect anything this year are so slim that it’s not worth the time to figure it out now.”

While most schools reported calm on campus, many health care and social service agencies on Wednesday were barraged with inquiries about the initiative. Officials said they tried to assuage people’s fears and continue to provide services as needed.

Officials at the St. Joseph Health System, where doctors went on a hunger strike last week to protest Proposition 187, said they will “aggressively support” efforts to overturn the measure in court.

Times staff writers Nancy Hsu and Lee Romney and correspondents Leslie Earnest, Mimi Ko and Jon Nalick contributed to this story.

Federal Funds At Risk

Before Tuesday’s vote, the federal government threatened to withdraw all its funding from California schools if administrators implemented Proposition 187. Federal funds received by Orange County school districts in the 1993-94 school year:

Federal % of general revenue fund budget Anaheim City Elementary $4,056,779 6.3% Buena Park Elementary 1,578,059 8.2 Centralia Elementary 1,199,710 6.0 Cypress Elementary 449,012 2.5 Fountain Valley Elementary 1,438,195 5.8 Fullerton Elementary 1,713,727 3.9 Hunt. Beach City Elementary 542,958 2.4 La Habra City Elementary 1,069,656 5.2 Magnolia Elementary 1,088,398 5.0 Ocean View Elementary 1,517,648 4.0 Savanna Elementary 633,872 7.5 Westminster Elementary 3,050,660 8.5 Anaheim Union High 3,335,130 3.0 Fullerton High 2,218,972 3.6 Huntington Beach High 2,462,189 3.1 Brea Olinda Unified 620,708 2.8 Capistrano Unified 2,849,519 2.2 Garden Grove Unified 10,114,535 5.8 Irvine Unified 4,319,560 4.4 Laguna Beach Unified 68,871 0.5 Los Alamitos Unified 833,972 2.6 Newport-Mesa Unified 2,601,973 2.8 Orange Unified 3,571,395 3.3 Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified 2,240,786 2.3 Saddleback Valley Unified 2,746,949 2.4 Santa Ana Unified 11,309,286 5.7 Tustin Unified 1,732,998 3.4 County total 69,365,514 4.0

Source: Orange County Department of Education