School Board OKs Deepest Cuts in a Decade : Education: The new $3.9-billion budget reflects steep drop in state funding. It gives final approval to increased class size, teacher layoffs and reduced maintenance.

The Los Angeles school board Tuesday approved a $3.9-billion budget reflecting the deepest cuts in school services in more than a decade.

A drastic drop in state funding, coupled with rising employee salaries and operating costs had left the Los Angeles Unified School District with a $274-million budget gap this year--a gap closed through layoffs and pay cuts, increases in class size and administrative reductions.

“I’m not going to defend this budget,” said board member Leticia Quezada, before joining five other board members in unanimously approving the finance package. Board member Roberta Weintraub was not at the meeting.

“I did not want to make any of these cuts and I’m not going to take the blame,” Quezada said. “We are the messengers of the bad news from Sacramento.”

The squeeze on spending by the state--which faced its own $14-billion deficit--led to a school system budget that is $135 million less than last year’s. The district relies on Sacramento for 75% of its annual funds.

Supt. Bill Anton lamented the toll the fiscal crisis has taken on the district’s 625 schools, but called bankruptcy the only other option, and said “this district will not go into bankruptcy.”

District officials are hoping for an $88-million state bailout that would allow the restoration of some school services, but a bill approved by legislators last week still needs the governor’s signature. Anton and school board President Warren Furutani planned to visit Sacramento today to seek support for the measure, which would grant the district a six-month delay in making its monthly contributions to the state teachers’ retirement fund. The money would be repaid with interest in future years.

This is the third year of painful cuts for the district, which has slashed more than $650 million--or 16% of its total budget--since 1988. Classrooms were shielded from most of the cuts until this year, “but we are down to the marrow now. . . . There is no where else to cut,” board member Julie Korenstein said.

On campuses this year, 2,000 teaching positions were eliminated as class sizes were increased. Funding for counselors and librarians was reduced. School maintenance and spending for classroom supplies was cut back.

In all, more than $116 million of the cuts landed directly at the schoolhouse door. In addition, almost $56 million was cut from the district’s administrative budget, and another $93 million is being sought in pay and benefit cuts from employees.

The budget allocates $2.9 billion, or 75%, to employee salaries and benefits.

Contracts are being negotiated this year with unions representing the system’s 58,000 employees, and district officials are seeking to save $50 million through pay and benefit cuts. Those savings, plus another $72 million in contract changes that have yet to be approved by employee unions, are included in the budget package.

“Technically, they can say the budget is balanced, but no way are we going to accept pay cuts,” said teachers union President Helen Bernstein. “They’ll have to come up with that money from someplace else.”

If the unions do not approve the salary cuts, the district must follow a protracted legal process before it can impose the cuts, or it must reduce spending in other areas to make up the $50-million savings.