Educators Now Facing a Welcome Dilemma

For years, Ventura County educators have begged state lawmakers for more money. Now--as Sacramento prepares to shower them with cash from the state’s budget surplus--the same educators are scrambling to figure out how to spend it.

Included in the state budget plan--which the Assembly approved Tuesday and sent to Gov. Pete Wilson--are millions of dollars to extend the school year and reduce class sizes around the state.

The task of implementing those programs in Ventura County is made all the more daunting by the fact that the latter measure--to reduce ninth-grade class sizes to 20 students in subjects such as English or math--will almost certainly require more classrooms and teachers.

As a result, local school administrators are plagued with a sense of uncertainty as the new school year looms ahead.

“We’ll take a very serious look at the program and do our best to implement it if we can,” said Joseph Richards, an assistant superintendent for the Ventura Unified School District. “Just like the other school districts, we’re concerned about space and teachers.”

Along with the money for a longer year and smaller classes, the budget presented to the governor contains more than $2.3 million for special school projects around Ventura County.

On higher-education issues, the state budget includes $16.5 million to transform Camarillo State Hospital into the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge, a first step toward possible creation of the county’s first public university, Cal State Channel Islands. Following Wilson’s recommendation, the Legislature earmarked $11.3 million for renovation and capital construction and $5.2 million for technology, maintenance and other support services.

The money will be used to operate the satellite campus and turn a number of the hospital’s Spanish-style buildings into classrooms and administrative offices.

“The budget seems to be fine and we’re ready to move ahead,” said Noel Grogan, project manager for the developing Cal State Channel Islands campus. “We were really pleased this started out in the governor’s budget and that we were able to receive the support in the Legislature to move it along and make it a reality.”

School district officials, however, got more than they expected--including the money for class-size reduction. Although districts do their best to anticipate pending legislation, the extra money came as a surprise.

The Simi Valley Unified School District could be forced to hire more than a dozen new teachers, said Cary Dritz, an assistant superintendent.

The $89-million measure, sponsored by Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo) calls for reducing freshman class sizes, starting with English. Since most high schools in Ventura County reduced freshman English class sizes in the 1980s, they will now be able to reduce class sizes in another core subject, such as social science, physical science or math.

“Finding a math teacher right now is very difficult and to find fully-qualified math teachers is very, very tough,” Dritz said.

Dritz said that although reducing class sizes is a positive, he doubts his district will be able to quickly implement the plan. “This is coming as a big surprise,” he said.

In Oxnard, school officials said they too were caught off guard by the class-reduction measure and cited the need for additional space as a critical issue.

“We are already over capacity at every one of our schools . . . we added [portable classrooms] just to deal with the kids we’ve got,” said Richard Canady, an assistant superintendent for the Oxnard Union High School District.

Charles Weis, Ventura County’s superintendent of schools, said despite the problems the program may initially pose for school administrators, students will benefit in the long run. There are about 10,000 ninth-graders in Ventura County.

“I think class-size reduction helps kids get the attention they need,” Weis said. “This is going to be a good thing for kids in Ventura County.”

School administrators are looking forward to attending workshops next week that will focus on how to implement the governor’s budget. The administrators will then meet with their district’s staff, principals and counselors to gauge how quickly they will be able to make changes.

The proposal to spend $195 million statewide to extend the school year, however, is expected to have little effect on the Oxnard Union High School District.

During the last three years the district has participated in an experimental state-funded program under which its campuses have extended the school year to 195 days. “It will have no effect on our students,” Canady said of the state proposal.

Throughout the rest of the county, Weis said, the proposal will likely trigger renegotiations of school calendars, which were set last spring.

While positioning Ventura County students to deepen their studies and receive more attention from teachers, the state budget plan also appears to include funding for nearly half a dozen special projects in Oxnard, Moorpark, Santa Paula and Ventura.

As presented to the governor, the budget provides $500,000 to help pay for a new gymnasium at Rio Del Valle School in Oxnard, $200,000 to help renovate the Buena High School stadium in Ventura and $80,000 for swimming pool renovations at Santa Paula Union High School.

The Oxnard School District hopes to receive $800,000 to fund the “Parent Participation and Educational Technology Outreach Program.” Sponsored by Assemblyman Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard), the measure seeks to help preschool-aged children read, in part, by teaching parents how to read to their children and by improving the reading skills of parents themselves. Working on a similar concept, another aspect of the program aims to improve students’ computer skills by familiarizing parents with the technology.

Moorpark Unified School District also could get $738,000 to bus students to the new Walnut Canyon School, which aims to draw from all parts of the city to achieve racial balance.

The special projects must now make it past Wilson. The governor is expected to veto about $500 million in spending on such projects, which some legislators have criticized as wasteful.

Among the critics is Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) who contends such projects are a byproduct of a bloated state bureaucracy.

“I’m highly critical of all the layers of pork and lard that have been shoveled into this budget,” McClintock said. “This is the largest single spending increase by any state in American history.”

The bottom line, according to McClintock, is that “if the state would allow local school districts to make their own decisions about how to spend their money, there would be no need for special projects.”

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Times staff writer Fred Alvarez contributed to this story.