ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Newport-Mesa Schools Unveil List of 50 Possible Cuts

Faced with a potential loss of $8.2 million in the Orange County investment pool, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District on Thursday night unveiled a list of 50 possible cutbacks, including closing schools, eliminating bus service, laying off teachers and increasing class sizes.

The school board is scheduled to review and vote on the cuts Feb. 21, after an advisory committee that includes residents and union representatives holds public meetings and chooses from among $11.7 million in possible budget cuts.

“Everybody assigns a value to something, and that’s what we’re asking these people to do over the next two weeks,” Finance Director Michael Fine said.

Staff and salary cuts would yield the greatest savings. A 1% across-the-board salary decrease would save $634,000; a 2.9% reduction in support staff such as librarians and school nurses would save $410,000; and eliminating bus service--and drivers--would save $800,000. But all would be subject to renegotiating labor agreements.

“I’m just upset with the whole situation that we have to even be considering this. Up until Dec. 6, everything was great,” said Maya Decker, president of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers and a member of the review committee. “We’re engaging in a pretty traumatic exercise that I hope will be completely unnecessary.”

Increasing class size from an average of 29 to 31 students would save $800,000, but some parents questioned what that would do to the quality of education.

“I think the sacred cow should be class size, because it’s been creeping up and I truly believe that it affects student performance and learning,” said Pat Lamb, who has a child at Corona del Mar High School.

Lamb and about 80 other parents attended a community meeting at Corona del Mar High School on Thursday night. Other parents at the meeting asked school officials how they planned to bridge the expected budget gap without raising taxes. Items such discontinuing funding for the Environmental Nature Center for an $80,000 savings, or eliminating employee mileage reimbursements to save $53,000, are likely to be viewed as more expendable, given the school board’s pledge to insulate students from the financial woes. The district would save $330,000 by killing all athletic programs.

A county proposal that would put 90% of each school district’s investment back into district coffers by June, if approved, would translate to $8.2 million in cuts in Newport-Mesa, Fine said, and the county’s promise to return the other 10% of investments to districts later is no comfort.

“Those IOUs are worthless,” he said. “It’s a subordinated claim in a Chapter 9 bankruptcy.” The district borrowed $47 million last year to invest in the pool with $53 million of its own money. Restructuring that debt could reduce cuts for the 1995-96 school year to as low as $3 million, Fine added.

Many of the items on the table have been under study for weeks. One citizen advisory committee has been reviewing the possibility of selling some of the district’s eight vacant schools, valued between $50 million and $65 million. Another committee is looking at merging some schools and redrawing district attendance boundaries in an effort begun two months ago as much to ease crowding in lower grades as to cope with the financial crisis.