Budget Plans Stir Emotions of Coaches : City Section: Proposed reassignments and layoffs for the 1991-92 school year trigger widespread resentment.

Every time Chatsworth High baseball Coach Tom Meusborn heads off to work these days, he cannot help but wonder where he will be next season.

Will he be coaching the Chancellors, as he desires, or will he be starting over as a teacher and coach at another school? Or worse, will he be just plain unemployed?

Meusborn is not the only one questioning his future with the Los Angeles Unified School District. There are 979 others who received notification letters last month indicating that the financially troubled district planned to lay off employees on June 30, the end of the current fiscal year. Manny Alvarado, Kennedy’s baseball coach, and Dave Contreras, Birmingham’s baseball coach, are among Valley-area coaches who have received notice.

An additional 1,193 employees, including teachers, counselors, school psychologists and librarians, received notification that they would be reassigned to another school. Howard Levine, Grant’s basketball coach, is one of those.

The Board of Education expects to make $317 million in cuts to achieve a balanced budget for 1991-92. The board will make no final decision until June. The notices were sent to safeguard the board’s options. The state Education Code forbids the dismissing of tenured staff members unless they have been notified by March 15.

The proposed layoffs affect some of the area’s top coaches. Teams coached by Meusborn and Alvarado have won the past two City Section 4-A Division baseball titles and each has been named The Times’ Valley coach of the year. Levine also earned that award after leading Grant to the 1988 City 3-A Division final.

The notices caught Meusborn, 30, a six-year employee with the district, unprepared. He was enjoying his second season as the Chatsworth coach, and he and his wife Mary were awaiting the arrival of their first child. The letter arrived two weeks before their son Shawn.

“Obviously, I wasn’t expecting it--what with the new baby coming and all,” Meusborn said. “Before it might have been OK because it was just me I had to think about, but now I have a family I have to think about.”

Social studies and physical education were the hardest hit among the disciplines affected by the proposed layoffs. Social studies departments would be cut by 391 positions, P.E. staffs by 319, according to the district.

Contreras, a social studies and physical education teacher at Birmingham, coached the Braves’ junior-varsity teams for four years before earning a promotion to the varsity last year after Wayne Sink retired. Now, in his first season as head coach, he feels cheated by the system.

“I’m kind of bitter about it because I’ve worked here six years and paid my dues to get here,” he said. “It’s very frustrating. Here I am trying to create a new program and now it puts more pressure on me to do well this year.”

Contreras, hired by the district in 1985, is hoping that a winning season this year will make him a hot coaching prospect in another school system. But even if Contreras leads Birmingham to a City title, there is no guarantee he will have a teaching job next school year. He faces a tight job market as other districts in the area face similar cutbacks.

Jim Benkert and Gary Grayson, the football and basketball coaches at Westlake, might be competing with Contreras for jobs. The Conejo Valley Unified School District also is facing cutbacks and issued layoff notices to Benkert and Grayson among others.

“I’ve been on the job for six years and have a college degree,” Contreras said. “You would expect to have some job security.”

Job security is not enough for Levine, the basketball coach at Grant. Levine, who waited two weeks to pick up his registered letter from the post office, was notified that he would be reassigned to another school. While some teachers might welcome reassignment to a layoff, Levine is not appeased.

“I’m offended that I can be moved around like a piece of meat,” Levine said. “If they see fit to lay off teachers, then you know why we’re having such problems with the education system.”

Levine, 37, a health and physical education teacher, has worked nine years in the district. He was told not to worry by the school’s principal, Robert Collins. But, there’s a catch. “The guy who told me my job was safe got a letter as well,” Levine said.

Alvarado, a physical education teacher at Kennedy, also is pessimistic about his status despite reassurances from colleagues. “Most of the people who have told me not to worry about it didn’t get a letter,” he said.

Fred Cuccia, who led the Poly football team to the 3-A City title last year, has been with the district just two years but did not receive a letter. Cuccia teaches English and English as a Second Language, neither of which are disciplines subjected to layoff.

The tenured staff members who received termination letters were entitled to request a hearing to determine whether proper procedure was followed by the district in the notification process and to question the seniority list.

Several hundred district employees showed up en masse at a district-paid hearing, which began April 15 at the Naval Marine Corps Reserve Center near Dodger Stadium. Administrative law Judge Paul Hogan is presiding over the hearings, which are expected to last through next week. Those employees affected are being encouraged to attend the hearings while substitutes are being brought in to take their places in the classroom.

Alvarado and Meusborn were among those at the hearing, hoping to find a loophole that might save their jobs.

“I was sitting there with Manny thinking, ‘We won it last year and you won it the year before and now they might be getting rid of us?’ ” Meusborn said. “I pity the guy who wins it this year.”

Although all district employees in question are hoping for the best, most are preparing for the worst. Alvarado, a father of three, has a game plan. “I’m going to update my resume and start looking for a job in June,” Alvarado said. “This year was kind of dedicated to the next couple of years, that’s the way I initially planned it anyway.”

Alvarado, in his third season with Kennedy, has been a contracted teacher with the district since 1978.

“Hopefully, we’ll have a helluva year and I’ll be a marketable item.”

Meusborn, whose team is in first place in the West Valley League, hopes to remain with the program, but with a newborn child at home he clearly has other priorities.

“I hope I’ll be with the district next year--I hope I’ll be at Chatsworth--but I have to update my resume and make sure I am working come fall,” he said. “I’d love to stay at Chatsworth. We’ve done a lot of new things to our facilities and I’m excited about doing some more things next year with the facilities. But, now it makes it a little difficult under the circumstances.”

In the meantime, while the district decides whether to proceed with its plan to cut and reassign its employees, area baseball coaches remain committed to the job they started months ago.

“I’m totally expecting to be here next year,” Contreras said. “I have to, or it’s not fair to the boys.”

* GOLF PROGRAMS FACE ELIMINATION

A projected budget shortfall might force Westlake, Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks highs to drop golf. C17