Orange Trustees Reject Federal Aid as Tainted

With one trustee comparing the federal government to a “drug dealer,” the conservative majority on the Orange Unified School District board has refused to allow five schools to apply for a program that exposes students to the working world because the funding would come from two U.S. agencies.

The applications rejected at Thursday’s board meeting would have provided the Orange Unified schools with $3,000 each to participate in a program funded by the federal departments of Labor and Education. Under the program, 100 county schools will link up with local businesses and other agencies to introduce students to various careers.

But the four-member conservative majority on Orange Unified’s board said the money is tainted because it comes from the federal government. In rejecting the applications, the trustees made good for the first time on a previous promise to personally review every bid for public or private grant money.

“When you start playing ball with the federal government, it’s like playing with a drug dealer--the first one is always free,” Trustee Bill Lewis said before the 4-3 vote to block the grant applications. Later, Lewis added that the federal government “lures you in, and then you’re hooked on federal money. You’re a slave to the government.”

The board’s decision surprised and disappointed California Elementary School Principal Cindy Caywood, who had applied for one of the grants, hoping to use the money to help her students meet people in a variety of jobs.

“This was a perfect opportunity to get that start, to make those connections in the business community,” Caywood said. “Everybody is saying we’re going to a welfare state. But if the students never see anything but what’s modeled at home, how will they ever know if they want to be a doctor, lawyer or a farmer? . . . I think the principals are getting very discouraged and frustrated [with the board].”

The promise to scrutinize all grant applications came after the board retreated from an unprecedented proposal to ban all grants providing medical, dental or psychological services on district campuses. Hundreds of people in parent, community and school groups angrily protested the proposed policy in April before the board backed away from it.

The debate stemmed from an effort by trustees to eliminate a popular health and social service program at Lampson Elementary School in Garden Grove, which is attended largely by low-income children. The program provides them with basic care from doctors, dentists and psychologists.

The district serves 27,000 students in Orange, Villa Park and parts of Anaheim Hills, Garden Grove and Santa Ana. About 37% are poor enough to qualify for free breakfasts provided by the federal government.

Trustee James Fearns, who consistently votes in the minority on social policy decisions, said Thursday’s vote was retaliation for the earlier loss.

“This was the epitome of good grants,” Fearns said Friday. “There was no violation of school policy. It had to be ultimately malicious. They’re mad that their policy was changed and now they’re trying to show their power. . . . I don’t think we’ll ever see a grant again.”

Added Trustee Robert H. Viviano: “The impression I have is that this board does not wish to take grants from the United States of America.”

The Vision 2020 grant applications appeared doomed almost as soon as the board majority began to discuss them Thursday night. Board members Martin Jacobson, Maureen Aschoff and Max Reissmueller agreed with Lewis that federal money always has strings attached. The district ends up renewing them year after year until ultimately it can’t live without them, they argued.

Actually, the Vision 2020 grants have a relatively short shelf life--five years at the most, said Lorraine Dageforde, the business-education partnership specialist for the county Department of Education.

The program, funded jointly by the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Education, is the offspring of the federal Educate America Act of 1994, which included a companion School to Work Opportunity Act, she said.

The county Education Department has been working for the past year to organize private businesses, volunteer groups, colleges and government agencies into the Orange County Coalition, the organization that will implement the program, she said.

That group, which includes several chambers of commerce, was one of only 13 in the state to win a federal grant, she said. Officials have $1.4 million to disburse to Orange County schools over the next five years.

Once the grants run out, the school-business networks created should be self-functioning, Dageforde said.

“The whole purpose is to create a curriculum in schools that is relevant to students so they can see the connection between what they do in school and what they will do in life,” she said. “We want them to have experiences at job sites such as shadowing [workers] and internships.”

The $3,000 would have been spent to provide materials and training for teachers and hire two people at each school to organize the program with local businesses.

Neil McKinnon, an assistant superintendent, said that “most of the schools see this as money to support things they are already doing. It puts structure to the program and gives the schools some resources.”

But Jacobson said he did not believe that the grant would last only one year. “Isn’t this kind of deceiving?” he asked. “You have to renew each year. . . . I’m also concerned about the board losing accountability. It does make me nervous.”

His view was supported by Aschoff, who said Friday that she prefers block grants that don’t intrude on local control.

“I’d like to see the power not be in the federal and state government, but left to the schools to create their own programs,” she said. “I would like to see the power come from the ground up.”

Paul Nelson, president of the Orange Chamber of Commerce, said Friday that his group already has some school-business programs in place and is ready to do more.

“The chamber is very much in support of there being a relationship between business and the schools,” he said. “If students and teachers don’t know what business needs in an employable graduate, they can’t deliver what we need at the end of 12 years.”

Nelson said the chamber will study the Vision 2020 material and discuss ways to achieve the same goals with the school board.

But Caywood said school teachers and administrators are already overwhelmed with work and budget problems. The facilitators they could have hired with the grant money would have bought the time and expertise to set up the vital programs with businesses.

She said the board is sending another negative message to district employees.

“What they’re doing is telling us that we don’t know what we’re doing,” she said. “If we’re thinking about kids, then take the politics out, take the personal agendas out. We’re getting so political.”