The school board had already reduced administrative spending, borrowed from its construction accounts, cut custodial services and dipped into its insurance reserves to narrow the budget gap, before it voted this summer on cuts. There were bitter arguments and tears among board members as they slogged through what board President Warren Furutani termed "the ugly zone" of painful cuts. Ultimately, almost 2,000 teachers were laid off, hundreds of courses were eliminated and the remaining classes were crammed with additional students, and spending on such basic supplies as textbooks, pencils and paper was curtailed. Some critics blame the district for its own problems, charging that employee salaries (teachers make, on average, $43,000 a year) have increased disproportionately to state funding. And now, for schools that have just barely managed to accommodate the cuts, there's the dire prospect of more budget cuts to come this spring.
Schools In Crisis
Grim Days At Grant High
Fights, Absenteeism And Resentment Are Increasing, And Learning Is Suffering, As A Once-proud School Deals With Relentless Budget Cuts
Public schools around the country have been caught in the same sort of budget vise. Here, in the nation's second-largest school system, the problems are compounded by the ceaseless needs of its students. Almost one-third of the district's 640,000 students come to school speaking little or no English. More than 60% come from families so poor that they qualify for free school lunches. One in three drops out before graduating from high school.
"We're basing our funding of public schools on a concept that hardly exists anymore--the middle-class home where the kids are well taken care of, daddy works and mommy stays home, they have a family doctor and summer camp and music lessons and help with their homework," says Roberta Weintraub, who represents the East San Fernando Valley on the school board. "We have to wake up and realize these are kids of poverty, and they need so much more than we're able to give."
IN MANY WAYS, ULYSSES S. GRANT HIGH SCHOOL IS A MICROCOSM of the district--its successes, its failures, and the changes that have pushed the once-proud system into a relentless slide toward mediocrity.
