State seeks program cuts

For the state budget, Proposition 1D means $1.7 billion in spending cuts over five years.

But for the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, the measure hits much closer to home.

The proposition is one of six ballot initiatives, labeled 1A through 1F, that will ask state voters at a special election next month to increase taxes and cut state spending in order to make up more than $40 billion needed to close an increasing gap between the state’s dwindling revenues and the programs it wants to fund.

Locally, however, Proposition 1D would drastically cut funding for an organization that provides a variety of health-care and developmental services for preschool-aged Newport-Mesa kids.

Friday afternoon, a group of mostly moms pushed around their kids in baby strollers or walked them from classroom to classroom at one such program held at the BESST Center Adult Education Site in Costa Mesa.

In one room a woman was coaxing kids to open wide and checking their dental hygiene. In another, kids were tossing balls back and forth and building block towers to demonstrate motor skills. Cursory hearing and vision tests were administered in yet another room.

About 40 kids accompanied by parents participated in the screening. When the examiners found a kid with a problem such as obesity, a speech impediment or a behavioral problem (three of the more common problems) they referred the children to another center to get an additional screening and treatment.

Parents voluntarily bring their kids in for the program after seeing it advertised on fliers and posters. Roughly 80% of them leave with a referral for deeper analysis or treatment, according to one of the program’s administrators, Linda Smith.

Similar events are put on by the district’s Learning, Early Intervention, and Parent Support Project (LEAPS) four times a year, funded by money from the Children and Families Commission of Orange County.

LEAPS is a new program that the commission is testing in Newport-Mesa, but wants to expand to districts around the county.

“The LEAPS program has had very good outcomes. It’s such a good model and it has such good results you’d hate to see something like that go away,” said Kelly Pijl, the assistant director of the Children and Families Commission of Orange County.

The commission’s budget would be cut by about $17 million to $18 million a year — half of its total funding — if Proposition 1D passed.

Money for the commission comes from a 50-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes added by Proposition 10 in 1998. Proposition 1D would strip the commission’s funding, essentially allowing the state to use the extra tax to help balance the budget.

LEAPS is not the only program at risk in the Newport-Mesa district. Proposition 10 funding also pays for other similar developmental screening programs, preschool classes and a few registered nurses who treat district students.

However, if Proposition 1D fails, then the county commission keeps its funding, but the state is left with a larger deficit.

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.