ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Hitting Home : Investment Fiasco Trickles Down as School Lays Off Workers

The children of Glen Yermo school are among the first to feel the pinch.

The little elementary campus in Mission Viejo is losing two of its favorite people today, an office aide and a remedial reading instructor. Both were laid off by the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, along with 45 other new employees whose paperwork wasn’t even processed before Orange County’s financial losses were discovered.

District officials said Thursday that they had to terminate the newly hired teachers’ aides, clerks and custodians because of the county’s huge investment losses.

“Everyone used to say it’s just on paper,” said Pam Bragg, who did everything at Glen Yermo from keeping attendance to dispensing children’s medication. “Well, guess what? It’s not on paper anymore.”

Carol Harkins, who has been teaching remedial reading to 35 children at Glen Yermo for the last six weeks, said that if she had been hired one week sooner her job would be safe.

But because her position wasn’t formally approved by the Board of Education, it was eliminated in a cost-cutting frenzy.

Harkins said she is not worried about herself, even though her husband is also out of work. She’s worried about the promising students in her five reading classes.

As the only person teaching intensive phonics at Glen Yermo, she fears there will be a void into which some slower students may tumble.

“Working with them in second and third grades makes a huge difference in how they read when they get to fourth and fifth grades,” she said, moments after a school district clerk told her not to bother attending a big meeting for new employees.

Neither Harkins nor Bragg feels any bitterness. Both hope the district finds a way to restore their positions soon.

Harkins wonders if she will be able to stay at Glen Yermo as a substitute. Bragg wonders if things will loosen up after the first of the year, once the county figures out where all the money went.

“Who would have thought we’d end up in a situation like this?” Bragg said, referring to a county she has never known to be anything but prosperous.

But neither she nor Harkins was feeling optimistic Thursday, as teachers and co-workers began to say goodby. And as for the children, Harkins couldn’t bring herself to tell them she was leaving.

“I love my job,” she said, smiling bravely. “We make nothing, although you get used to making nothing.”

Bragg’s thoughts exactly.

“I love my job,” she said as her fellow office workers watched sadly. “If you have to work, you want to be in a job you enjoy. They just made me feel right at home from the onset. It was nice, feeling you were doing something important, even if it wasn’t pulling in a hundred grand.”

Directly across from Bragg’s desk is a wall display: A tree, with pictures of Glen Yermo’s employees sprinkled throughout the branches. Beneath the tree, hand-crafted letters read, “Glen Yermo Family.”

When the women in the office saw that Bragg’s picture was not part of the display, they vowed that they would add it.

“As a sign that you’re coming back,” one of the women told her.

Bragg smiled sadly.

With nothing to do Thursday afternoon, Harkins thought she might go to the mall and shop. She was wearing a red Christmas sweat shirt with the word joy embroidered across the front. It wouldn’t be the same shopping spree she had in mind only a few days ago. “It’s going to be a completely different Christmas,” she said.

Bragg, who had never before been laid off, said that every gift will need to be considered a little more carefully.

“I think anyone in this position that is counting on a job and doesn’t have it, it’s going to be difficult. When you’re talking 20 hours a week, it’s not that much, but it’s that extra little padding.”