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A 'KILLER' FOR SCHOOLS

HOW $5.2 BILLION BUDGET CUT IS LIKELY TO AFFECT LOCAL PROGRAMS
JESSICA PORTNER, Mercury News

A $5.2 billion cut in education funding. Six percent across the board. Four hundred dollars less per student per year.

Right now, they're just numbers. But in coming months, school districts up and down California will have to translate them into paper, pencils and people.
To get an early sense of the impact, the Mercury News is zeroing in on San Jose's Franklin-McKinley Elementary School District, which serves more than 10,000 mostly poor children on the East Side. It is one of 1,300 school districts in the state, each of which will have to balance its own budget. But in most of those districts, the human and educational effects of the proposed cuts will probably play out in similar fashion.

Franklin-McKinley stands to lose $4 million this year from an $80 million budget if Davis' plan wins legislative approval. That figure is the equivalent of eliminating textbooks for nearly half the students, or firing nearly half of all the secretaries, bus drivers and cafeteria workers. The $4 million translates into about a third of health benefits for all 900 employees, or the salaries of 1 in 10 teachers districtwide.

''These are very, very, very hard times,'' said Larry Aceves, the district's superintendent, who confesses he hasn't slept well since early December worrying about where the governor's budget ax would fall. ''It's like I have become the angel of death. We are going to lose people, and I have no choices. It's going to be killer.''

In one of the deepest education cuts in California history, Davis on Friday proposed slashing kindergarten-through-12th-grade funding by $5.2 billion over the next 18 months. The self-professed education governor said he could no longer cushion schools when faced with a ballooning budget deficit.

The bulk of the education cuts are ''across-the-board'' reductions, meaning that school districts would be able to decide what to slash in order tobalance their budgets. But Davis also took some specific actions, freezing cost-of-living adjustments for school employees, and slashing funding for dozens of programs from transportation to school safety and teacher training.

Davis attempted to make it easier for schools to absorb these cuts by loosening state regulations that restrict districts' financial flexibility. His budget plan would collapse 64 ''categorical'' programs covering everything from libraries to school safety to technology into a large block grant that schools can use as they see fit. Davis' budget blueprint also calls for the Legislature to relax the requirement that districts maintain a 3 percent cash reserve.

Aceves said that given the serious budget crisis and the fact that education funds are nearly half the state's budget, school funds had to take a hit. But he doubted that budgetary flexibility alone would do much to take the sting out of the governor's plans -- especially for Silicon Valley's poorest districts.

Aceves already has canceled spending on conferences, nixed all school field trips not paid for by fundraisers, and cut down on paper, pencils -- even multicolored yarn for art classes.

And he knows that won't be nearly enough.

''Those are nice, but the issue for us is now survival,'' said Aceves.

Aceves said he may have to expand class sizes in some grades or lay off secretaries, custodians or clerks.

Aceves, like most educators, says he has fewer opportunities to trim this year because nearly all of the district's budget is tied up in hiring teachers whose contracts prohibit them from being let go mid-year. Teachers, whose salaries constitute 60 percent of Aceves' budget, are shielded from the current-year cuts because state law requires districts to give teachers five months' notice before they are laid off.

So Aceves will have to make the most significant cuts in the upcoming school year.

Louise Persson, the principal of Franklin School, is already looking for ways to scrimp. She's using cheaper paper, rationing photocopying, buying longer-lasting markers and trying to get local companies to donate supplies.

''Any budget cutback, particularly a major one, will have major effect,'' said Persson, ''But we are not panicking. We have a serious challenge but we are going to meet it.'' Rafael Cruz, principal of Sylvandale Middle School, said that while the district's budget-cutting plan has yet to be determined, he frets that his school's academic and social services will suffer. He dreads losing the technological consultant for the school's new library, for example, or losing a school counselor.

''In middle schools, there are suicides, pregnant teens, and sometimes a counselor is first person in need to turn to. Not having that person available for a crisis is a scary possibility,'' he said.

''Whatever happens, this is going to mean a real big cutback in services for kids.''

San Jose Mercury News (CA)
January 14, 2003
Section: Front
Edition: Morning Final
Page: 1A