‘We’re Cutting Bone’: O.C. Schools Warn of Bleak Times

Alane Fogg takes low-performing first-graders on an educational journey each afternoon, improving their skills with books populated by hot rods and piglets.

The trip may be over in June.

Her teacher’s aide position at Cielo Vista Elementary in Rancho Santa Margarita is one of thousands of Orange County teaching jobs put in jeopardy by $6.2 billion in proposed state budget cuts to education.

“I’m really scared,” said Fogg, 35, whose two children attend the school. “Parents who think it’s just clubs or clerks that will be cut should be scared too. It isn’t hypothetical -- these cuts will touch kids.”

Her district, Saddleback Valley Unified, one of a few that has publicly detailed a list of potential cuts, faces a shortfall estimated as high as $12 million. Besides cutting reading aides, proposed trims include ending extracurricular programs such as the Academic Decathlon and laying off a dozen assistant principals and 230 credentialed teachers.

During the next month, districts countywide will compile similar lists in preparation for a March 15 deadline to notify teachers if they might be laid off next school year. The cuts Saddleback Valley is considering reflect what other districts are likely to cut.

Although next year’s state budget won’t be ready until July at the earliest, districts must begin cutting back now, since $2.2 billion of the cuts may be invoked in the current school year.

“The state, because of its inability to deal with the budget, is putting us between a rock and a hard place,” Orange County Supt. of Schools William M. Habermehl said.

Some districts, including Anaheim City and Garden Grove Unified, have instituted hiring freezes and are allowing only the most essential campus repairs. Irvine Unified will ask property owners to impose a $48 yearly fee on themselves for the use of school recreational facilities. The measure would generate an estimated $3.26 million a year to maintain ball fields and other facilities, freeing other district funds for classroom needs.

In the county’s largest district, 61,000-student Santa Ana Unified, some employees have been offered early retirement. A supplemental instruction period for high school freshmen was eliminated, and administrators were asked this month to start teaching two days a month to save money on substitute teachers.

“None of this is easy,” said Don Stabler, the district’s assistant superintendent of business services. “Right now, we are just buying time.”

Unless legislators grant districts flexibility in class-size reduction, the program that keeps classrooms at 20 students per teacher in lower grades, along with freshman math and English, probably will be eliminated. Districts will start by laying off their most recent hires.

“We are going to run off a lot of young qualified people from the teaching profession,” Habermehl said. “For the next 10 years, we are going to feel the impact of these cuts.”

Saddleback Valley, for example, could save $3.7 million by increasing class size and laying off teachers.

“Our guiding principle was to cut as far away from the classroom as we could, but class-size reduction is a big-ticket item,” district Supt. Jerry Gross said. “The cuts that we will have to make are unconscionable.”

Roughly 1,000 children in his district receive help from aides like Fogg. She works with a handful of students at a time, guiding them through books that emphasize specific skills, such as using vowels.

“This isn’t just a little extra that no one will notice if it’s gone,” said Fogg, who has been an aide for two years. “There are so many kids who need the help.”

Budget uncertainty already has affected Cielo Vista in subtle ways. Because the district can’t afford to reorder many supplies until next year, teachers buy the toilet paper for the faculty restrooms and urge students to shake their hands dry after washing to save paper towels.

The suggestion to return 15 assistant principals to the classroom raises concerns for student safety, said parents and district officials.

“That’s the one that really keeps me awake at night,” Gross said. “They provide such an essential service in supervising children.”

“We’ve reached a point where we’re cutting bone,” he said. “You can’t run a business like that, and we can’t teach kids like that.”

Eliminating administrators means teachers increasingly will be called upon to pick up the slack, said Janet Henry, president of the Saddleback Valley Educators Assn., which represents the district’s 1,700 teachers. If class size is increased as well, things will inevitably start being neglected, she said.

“Life for a student in the classroom is going to be different,” Henry said. “Don’t let anyone say differently.”

Along with programs like the reading aides to help lower-performing students, high school preparation classes for the Scholastic Assessment Test, and special sections for eighth-graders in the bottom quarter of the district, the cuts may also affect top students. One proposal calls for removing teachers from support positions for Academic Decathlon and the International Baccalaureate curriculum.

“If they cut out my position, there’s no program,” said Jerry Chris, coordinator of Mission Viejo High’s International Baccalaureate program. “And these are the things that keep school from being a drudgery for a lot of kids.”

Getting the community involved in protesting the cuts is difficult, since many people are too worried about the possibility of war on Iraq to focus on other issues, Henry said.

“Since we’ve prevailed in the past with budget crises, there’s this attitude that we’re just having another glitch and we’ll get through it,” she said. “Citizens can’t even conceptualize what it will mean to their kids to have a bare-bones classroom. They’ll see reality in the fall, but by then it will be almost too late to get back things that are already gone.”

Like other school groups around the state, the Saddleback Valley PTA Council, which represents all 38 schools in the district, is urging parents to deluge legislators with letters and visits to protest the cuts.

“It’s going to take an uprising from the community to address this,” council president Dolores Winchell said. “Otherwise, the delivery of education in our district will be severely crippled. I just can’t fathom how we’re going to survive.”