Irvine Schools Face Stark Ages as Arts, Science Cuts Loom

What do “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” Picasso’s blue period and the wonders of the universe have in common?

They’re all things Meghan Sanchez, a 10-year-old fourth-grader at Irvine’s Alderwood Basics Plus School, learned about this year. She’s started playing the violin, proudly shows off her expanding art portfolio and can name the planets in order of their distance from the sun.

Meghan was wearing a large self-portrait suspended from her neck to demonstrate her accomplishments as a budding artist as she stood outside the Irvine Unified School District’s boardroom Tuesday night. She watched trustees cry as they voted to slash the enriched arts, music and science programs that have opened up her world in the last few months, as well as increase class sizes in some grades.

The unanimous decision to slash nearly $5 million in programs has district officials worrying that Irvine’s schools--renowned nationally for their educational quality--will become mediocre at best and below average at worst.

“Meghan, this is your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day,” said Trustee Karen Preston, choking back tears. “I can’t even imagine what teachers will do.”

But unless trustees cut at least $4 million from the $140-million budget for the 2000-01 school year, they’ll plummet into a deficit and face a takeover by the state.

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The cutting became necessary after voters narrowly defeated a $95 parcel tax last November. District officials also blame Irvine’s outdated classification as a rural district by the state. This gives the city’s schools $95 less per student than the countywide average.

A $95 parcel tax measure on the April 11 ballot, which includes a senior exemption, would bring about $3 million to the district coffers and soften the blow of the proposed cuts. But the district must send out layoff notices by mid-March, a month before the vote.

Losing special programs and small class sizes “puts us in profiles very much like other districts in the county--probably even lower,” said Dean Waldfogel, the district’s deputy superintendent for instruction.

With the exception of first- and second-graders, the cuts will affect students and teachers across the board, Waldfogel said.

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Take next year’s third-graders. Class-size reduction had left each teacher with only 20 students. Next year, teachers will be instructing an additional 11 or 12 children in each classroom.

Apart from the logistical problems of tearing down walls to make room for extra students, Waldfogel said, teachers will have less time to work with children individually and to catch problems at an early stage.

One of those students who benefited from close attention, Meghan was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in second grade.

“Because the teachers were able to identify certain needs in Meghan, they helped me to deal with it,” said Meghan’s mother, Ruth, who added that her daughter was able to progress in school according to her abilities.

Third-grade teachers will have to take on art and music education, subjects many don’t feel qualified to teach, but their colleagues in fourth, fifth and sixth grade will be affected even more drastically by the additional loss of science specialists.

Teachers, who have relied on the specialists for the last 18 years, will have to read up on the subject and prepare lessons in addition to their regular workload.

The students’ “science experience is much more likely to be textbook based,” Waldfogel said. “They’ll be reading about it and not conducting hands-on experiments.”

The loss of the enriched programs will also deprive teachers of about three hours in preparation time, taking away time to review student work, he added.

But Waldfogel said Irvine’s high schools will also suffer.

Adding two more students to each classroom might not seem like a huge increase at first. But since each teacher has six classes, the increase piles another 12 students on top of the 170-plus kids teachers see each day.

The number of high school electives is also likely to decline.