PLACENTIA : Students Voice Their Concern on Bonds Crisis

A half-dozen Valencia High School students who went to Placentia’s City Council meeting last week to ask about countywide financial woes expressed concern in interviews that the bonds crisis would hurt school programs.

The students, who did not get a chance to speak because they were mistakenly led to believe that youths could not address the council, were members of the high school choir who assembled at the Civic Center to go caroling.

Ron Otto, 14, said that he and the others wanted to know whether the choir’s minimal funding and other programs like clubs, drama, sports and student transportation would be affected by the failed investment fund and whether teachers would be laid off.

James Crumley, 16, was concerned about the fate of school lunches and how cuts in student programs might impact crime in the city.

“I wanted to know, if you have to cut programs for schools, won’t crime rates go up?” he asked, noting that some of his friends had flirted with gang activities but turned to after-school programs when they were offered.

“If you cut things like that, that’s like saying, ‘We don’t have the time or the money to waste on you,’ ” he said.

Rebecca Ayling, 16, said she fears that classes will be interrupted and that would affect her class’s graduation.

“If school lets out in February, we won’t be able to make up the credits this year,” she said. “That means we’d have to go to (high) school for five years. I’m not going to do it.”

Carla Walworth, 14, said she worried that programs counseling safe sex and family planning would be cut and that teachers would be laid off. “It’s hard to get good teachers,” she said. “If they don’t pay the teachers, they’ll just hire anyone who’ll work cheap and that doesn’t really care about us.”

Erica Ortega, 14, echoed those fears. “I heard some teachers say they wouldn’t work if they didn’t get paid,” she said.