Budget Talks Target Class-Size Funding

The end game in federal budget talks has zeroed in on a year-old $1.2-billion program that already has put thousands of new teachers into the nation’s schools, including 200 in Los Angeles, nearly 300 in Philadelphia and 800 in New York.

As the budget debate continued Monday, initial data from a survey of 40 big-city school districts and interviews with education lobbyists indicated that the federal class-size reduction initiative has made significant inroads in some of the nation’s least-prosperous public schools and that the program enjoys solid support among many education groups.

Republicans and Democrats alike acknowledge that hiring new teachers to reduce class size holds powerful bipartisan appeal--as California politicians have discovered in the three years since the state began its own multibillion-dollar teacher-hiring initiative.

But the two parties are straining to put their own stamp on the federal program, aware that it could become a marquee issue in next year’s elections.

Republicans Urge Greater Flexibility

Key Republicans in Congress argue that school districts--often hard-pressed to find qualified teachers or classrooms to place them in--should be given greater freedom to spend the money on other priorities. President Clinton counters that local, state and federal officials are already coming up with creative answers to local dilemmas and that tinkering with the program would undercut its mission just as it is getting underway.

Ultimately, the gulf between the two sides may turn out to be more rhetorical than substantive. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate subcommittee that handles education funding, told reporters Monday: “I’m prepared to acknowledge with the president that [class] size should be the first priority,” even as he demanded more local control over federal funds.

A survey for the Council of Great City Schools found that more than 3,500 new teachers were hired in the 40 big-city districts in the last year, 90% of them fully certified and most bound for classrooms in the earliest grades to help improve basic reading and math instruction. Further, more than 22,000 teachers got professional training through the federal program.

Across the country, Education Department officials said, 29,000 new teachers have been hired as a result of the funding. That represents an increase of about 1% of the faculty in public schools nationwide. The federal initiative aims to hire 100,000 new teachers over several years in an effort to drive down the average class size to 18 students in first, second and third grades.

“We believe it’s working,” said Reginald Felton, a lobbyist for the National School Boards Assn., which is neutral in the dispute between Clinton and Congress. “We have no reason to believe it is not working. The concern is that school districts need to feel reassured that the commitment made by the federal government continues.”

Educators are looking for reassurance in places like Columbus, Ohio. There, school officials spent the first infusion of federal money on 57 additional teachers--placing them in 14 elementary schools with the highest poverty and lowest test scores. Thanks in large part to the federal money, the student-teacher ratio in grades 1-3 has dropped to 15 to 1 from 25 to 1, said Frank Habeker, a Columbus school official.

The new teachers have gone right to work, Habeker said, even though some schools short on space were forced to draw up inventive blueprints for their classrooms.

California Using Funds for Other Purposes

Some of the federal money was put to different uses in California, where the state embarked on its own class-size reduction program in 1996. Earlier this year, Gov. Gray Davis obtained federal permission to spend the new money on other priorities, such as training thousands of teachers who do not yet hold credentials.

Doug Stone, a state education spokesman, said that all but 85 of California’s 1,000 school districts applied this year for federal funds totaling $129 million--including $26.3 million earmarked for Los Angeles Unified School District. The money, Stone said, is “fundamental” to the state’s goals of cutting class size and getting more qualified teachers into the classroom.

The program has earned similar praise in Philadelphia, where school officials hired 288 new teachers--among them 254 “literacy interns” who are working toward their credentials even as they are in the classroom--and in New York, where 808 new teachers were hired to help reduce class size for 90,000 students from kindergarten through third grade.

Clinton has asked for $1.4 billion to fund the program’s second year; Congress so far has agreed to spend $1.2 billion.

The president on Monday intensified his efforts to preserve the class-size program as it was first approved in negotiations with Congress a year ago. Telling reporters that the program so far has benefited more than 1.7 million children, he said: “So we must continue down that path, not abandon it.”

Republicans replied that what matters when hiring teachers is quality, not quantity.

Meanwhile, administration and GOP negotiators continued trying to settle other budget issues, which include disputes over environmental policy, law-enforcement funding and payment of United Nations dues.

The White House asked Republicans to provide an additional $2.3 billion to the $94 billion they have provided in the bill financing the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. Republicans agreed to provide only $228 million more.

*

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Janet Hook contributed to this story.