Santa Ana’s class-size woes expand

Audits of Santa Ana Unified School District’s troubled class-size reduction program have found that problems with overcrowded classes exceeding state caps were not limited to elementary schools but affected ninth-graders as well, independent auditor Christy White said at a school board meeting Tuesday.

In district high schools, special education students taught in mainstream classes were not included on class rosters, making it appear that the classes met state size requirements when they were actually too large to be eligible for class-size reduction funding, White said.

Other classes simply had too many enrolled students to qualify for funding, she said.

The depth of the problem and its financial impact won’t be publicly known until the final audit is presented to the school board in August, she said, but in the 2005-06 school year the district received $549,696 in state funds for keeping high school classes small.

The loss will be on top of the $2 million in state funding the district is losing for failing to keep elementary classes limited to an average of 20.4 students per teacher. Those problems came to light in a series of Times articles reporting that teachers at several elementary schools were asked to sign falsified class rosters and that the district misused substitute teachers in an attempt to qualify for $16 million in state funds during the 2006-07 school year.

District officials have said the elementary school problems occurred when class sizes didn’t shrink as much as expected after the winter holiday. In hopes of salvaging some class-size reduction funds, they said, it was decided to add long-term substitute teachers to some classrooms to improve student-teacher ratios.

The preliminary audit -- conducted by the public accounting firm of Nigro, Nigro & White -- found that this method had failed, however, because of poor instructions and inadequate monitoring by district administrators, a failure to hire enough substitutes and a lack of classroom space.

On Tuesday, White presented the final audit of the elementary program and reiterated that those inadequacies laid the groundwork for the problems. She urged the district to provide adequate staffing, monitor class sizes frequently, ensure that class rosters are recorded accurately and identify a class-size reduction program manager responsible for overseeing the program.

Supt. Jane Russo named Assistant Supt. Helen Stainer to oversee K-3 class-size reduction, and Assistant Supt. Lewis Bratcher to oversee the ninth-grade program. Top administrators and the school board will be apprised monthly of class sizes, she added.

Schools trustees were bothered by the revelations, and some said White’s audit did not go far enough.

Board member Audrey Yamagata-Noji questioned whether something in the district’s culture allowed the problems to go unrecognized for months until teachers spoke out publicly in March.

“Along the way, there were too many individuals who knew,” she said.

Board member John Palacio urged the board to order audits of the prior school year, saying that teachers have told him the irregularities were not limited to the 2006-07 school year.

“We’ve been doing class-size reduction for a decade.... No one was in charge. No one was monitoring,” he said.

Board members planned to discuss the issue further in closed session, when they are legally allowed to deal with personnel matters, board President Rob Richardson said.

“Folks operate, generally speaking, with good intentions,” he said. “Good intentions aren’t enough. You must understand what the laws are.”

seema.mehta@latimes.com