School Cuts Affecting Cherished Programs : Budget crisis: Education officials decry the elimination of services once considered indispensable.

EL TORO —  Ginny Kutcher’s two children have received a well-rounded education in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

Sixteen-year-old Heidi, a student at El Toro High School, learned to play the flute in the district’s elementary music program. Her sister, Lisa, an El Toro High graduate, learned to play the clarinet. Both ended up in the El Toro High band.

And the girls got more than just music lessons. In addition to their regular classes, they had the benefit of a well-trained support staff. Nurses were available if they got hurt. Counselors were always on hand for advice on curricula and college and just life in general.

Heidi and Lisa were lucky. But with a $2-billion reduction in state education funds proposed by Gov. Pete Wilson lurking on the horizon, students who go to school in Saddleback Valley and most of the county’s other 26 districts are likely to be far less fortunate.

In the wake of Wilson’s proposal, school districts throughout the county have been forced to cut services and programs to the bone. Class size will rise by an average of two students in La Habra. More than 50 teaching positions will be cut in Anaheim high schools. An instructional television program will cease after 35 years in Anaheim elementary schools.

Countywide, as many as 650 guidance counselors, music and art teachers, gym teachers, administrators, nurses and other educators once considered indispensable will receive notices this week telling them not to return to work this fall. And the students who relied on those specialists will find themselves with little guidance and few extracurricular activities.

“I am a Republican and I voted for Wilson, but he’s making a big mistake,” said Kutcher, a budget clerk at Serrano Intermediate school. “The school kids played for him when he came to Orange County before his election. I feel he’s turned his back on the kids who rallied to get him elected.”

Under state law, school employees to be laid off in the fall must receive layoff notices by May 15. And while some administrators hold out hope that the state Legislature will come up with enough bailout funds to rehire some of the employees, the outlook is grim.

“I’m not a doomsayer, but this is potentially the worst crisis in education in years,” said J. Kenneth Jones, superintendent of the Fullerton Joint Union High School District. “We’re taking four steps backward here.”

The loss of hundreds of jobs will undoubtedly be devastating. But the worst part of the budget crisis, officials say, is that students won’t have the same school services that were once taken for granted.

“Forget about modern equipment for our children,” said Assemblyman Tom Umberg (D-Garden Grove), a member of the Assembly Education Committee. “We’re not talking about having luxuries in the classroom. We’re talking about whether they will have necessities like textbooks.”

Bill Livingstone, a spokesman for Gov. Wilson, said the cuts are necessary to close a $13-billion deficit in the state budget.

“We’re not asking for any more sacrifice from education than . . . from any other agency,” Livingstone said. “I think everyone has been concerned with quality of education. Education comprises 40% of the budget. Schools are only being asked to provide 14% of the cuts needed to close the $13-billion gap.”

Whatever the outcome of the state budget cuts, some students in the county will not recognize their own campuses in the fall. Services that were once considered necessities will be gone, leaving only questions behind.

With nurses dropped from payrolls, who will children turn to when they are injured at school? With music programs dismantled at the elementary school level, how will high school bands recruit members? With librarians given the pink slip, who will students turn to for help in research?

The answers aren’t clear yet, but it’s virtually certain that some classes will be dropped because teachers have to be reassigned. And friends will be lost as well.

Erin Martino, a 16-year-old student at Century High School in Santa Ana, said she will miss those who have been given layoff notices. The Santa Ana Unified School District is scheduled to lay off 51 certificated employees and 60 to 70 classified employees, including 45 bilingual aides. “I know some of these people, and I hate to see them go,” Martino said. “This is going to affect so many of us.”

Countywide, school districts may have to shave as much as $50 million from their budgets--which total more than $1.6 billion--for the 1991-92 school year, said Bobbee Cline, a Mission Viejo parent who organized a 1983 Orange County rally to lobby for more funds for education. Cline noted that the 1983 rally was called to protest $7.9 million in cuts--an unheard of proposal at the time.

“When does this picking on education stop?” Cline asked. “This is like deja vu, except this time the news is getting worse and worse. My children are being nailed by this.”

Cline noted that students who need the most support are the ones who will suffer most. In Saddleback Valley, for example, the district’s remedial reading program was axed. Students who are having trouble reading will quickly fall behind their classmates without special help, and are more likely to fall through the cracks if class sizes increase and personal attention decreases, she said.

“It is just awful,” Cline said. “Look at our kids and look at our crowded classrooms. “It is immoral.”

In all districts, administrators said, the budget outlook is likely to remain dismal. Class size will increase virtually everywhere. Desperately needed repairs will have to wait.

In La Habra, school officials will recommend that class size increase from 27 students to 29. The Anaheim Union High School district plans to eliminate 50 teaching positions, and the Anaheim City School District will eliminate an instructional TV program that has been in place since 1954. In Capistrano Unified, fifth- and sixth-graders will no longer have the opportunity to travel on popular camping trips.

The list goes on. Irvine Unified is cutting its library media staff in half and will clean classrooms every other day, instead of daily. The Newport-Mesa Unified district will cut transportation money for its athletes. Students at Placentia’s elementary schools will no longer have a music program. In Saddleback Valley, high school seniors seeking advice on which college to attend will be on their own--all 10 counselors at the district have been either reassigned to other positions or fired. School-level counselors are on their way out, as well.

At Serrano Intermediate School in El Toro, about a dozen seventh- and eighth-graders wander in to see guidance counselor Michelle Dunn-McDermaid every day, seeking advice on high school choices or curriculum electives or just life in general.

When Dunn-McDermaid is not in her office, the messages pile up. One day, there were 20 laid out on her desk--14 from parents who needed help with their children, and six from students desperate for advice. But the most critical message that day was from the Saddleback Valley Unified School District. It was a pink slip.

A counselor at the school for seven years, Dunn-McDermaid said she is worried about what will happen to the students when she is gone.

“It’s a big question mark,” said Dunn-McDermaid, the only counselor in the 1,500-student school. “On an average day, kids come here and we help them through their parents’ divorces, thoughts of suicide and sometimes child abuse. These kids come here to talk to me about their problems. When the counselors are gone, who will they go to?”

Dunn-McDermaid said her colleagues have told her that after she is gone, they might turn her office into a shrine.

“As adults, we forget how painful it is for children sometimes,” she said. “The small things we can cope with as adults are devastating to kids. Children will be the ones hurt at the end of this.”