GLENDALE : Cosmetology Classes at School Spared

Aspiring beauticians and their instructors in Glendale High School’s cosmetology department said Wednesday that they are relieved the school district has given their program a one-year reprieve from the budget-cutting ax.

The Glendale school board decided Tuesday night not to cut three jobs from the department’s five-person staff to help eliminate a $64,000 shortfall in the program’s annual operating budget.

District officials drafted the proposal after the Los Angeles County Regional Occupation Program, which co-sponsors the cosmetology classes, said the program is too costly and is eating up the lion’s share of the district’s ROP funds.

Officials said the district will absorb the shortfall in the 1995-96 school year, but added that they will investigate ways to make cosmetology more self-sufficient--possibly turning the department the following year into a program in which science, mathematics, English and other academic subjects are integrated with students’ vocational goals.

“The students and faculty are very excited that we’ll be able to continue. There was a lot of anxiety,” said Ann Feliz, an instructor.

“We felt with the way the proposal was set up, we would not be successful any more. There wouldn’t be enough of the program left to maintain the quality, and it would just fall apart,” she said.

Based at Glendale High since 1937, the cosmetology program offers high school students and recent graduates certified training for the state cosmetology license examination.

Staffed by three full-time teachers, one part-time instructor and an office supervisor, the program costs about $147,000 a year in salaries and supplies, $81,000 of which is paid by the county ROP.

The deficit has arisen primarily because the district also has been applying all of the $64,000 in discretionary funds it gets from ROP to the cosmetology program, a practice it has been ordered to discontinue, officials said.

In addition to staffing cuts, district officials had also proposed restructuring the program so that many cosmetology students who are considered adults--those who are already out of high school--would be sent to private beauty colleges.