When Santa Ana Unified Supt. Jane Russo called for the audit of the district's embattled elementary school class size reduction program to also cover the ninth grade, she assured district trustees at their Tuesday meeting that no concerns had been raised about freshman classes.
But six days earlier, the state Department of Education had notified the principal of Santa Ana High of someone's complaint that the class size reduction policy for ninth grade was apparently being violated.
" ... would you please let me know the situation at Santa Ana High?" John Merris-Coots, head of the state's ninth-grade class size reduction program, wrote in an April 4 e-mail to Principal Dan Salcedo.
The state has not received a response, although Salcedo had told Merris-Coots he would send one the next day.
The request came as Santa Ana Unified has found itself in the midst of a widening scandal in which teachers have complained that administrators, in an effort to collect badly needed money from the state, falsified documents to make it appear that elementary classes were smaller than they were. The accusations have resulted in apologies, an audit and outrage among teachers who say they were asked to lie.
The state has two class size reduction programs. The first, aimed at kindergarten through third grade, provides as much as $1,024 annually per student in classes with an average of 20 students or fewer per teacher and no more than 22 at any one time. The second program, known as Morgan-Hart, is aimed at ninth-grade core classes. This fiscal year, the program will provide $204 per pupil in classes with the same student-teacher ratio.
In the 2005-06 school year, the district received $549,696 for small ninth-grade English classes, according to the state. This year, the district was trying to implement the program in 401 English and math classes, but a recent district report found that 55 were in jeopardy of not qualifying for the funding.
The audit, which the board approved Tuesday night with the ninth grade included, was prompted by articles in The Times that detailed the district's attempt to meet the student caps in elementary school by moving some students off class rosters even though they never changed classrooms. Substitutes who were supposed to be instructing in these classrooms, lowering student-teacher ratios, instead were often assigned to cover for absent teachers.
