L.A. Unified students pay the price of budget cuts

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa plans to close Los Angeles' $406-million budget gap by cutting jobs and charging residents more to park, play golf and get their trash picked up.

The school system doesn't have those options; there are no fees to hike or ways to drop the most expensive students from the budget. The district has to rely on program cuts to make up for a $460-million shortfall projected in the fall.

It's the same sort of dilemma many families are facing in this era of shrinking paychecks, rising gas prices and mounting home foreclosures. We stop eating out, and scrap summer vacation plans and home improvement projects. We put the Macy's card away and wait for the JCPenney sale. We do without.

Stretching education dollars is not that simple.

Employees will certainly be let go; they account for 80% of the district's budget. Next year there will be fewer people to fix classroom computers, counsel college-bound students, track down truants and serve school lunches. Then program cuts will take their toll, as magnet school budgets shrink, science labs are shuttered and more students are stuffed into overcrowded classes.

It's hard to fathom a cut of almost half a billion dollars -- a number so large it obscures, rather than illuminates, the losses. But students and parents who have been through it know. And their numbers are legion, and growing.

When my oldest started kindergarten at our neighborhood school, the district was flush. A wish list of simple items was posted on her classroom door: A rug for story-time. Easels, paints, little plastic aprons. Parents fished in their pockets for a few dollars.

But a year later, the bottom fell out. More than $220 million had to be cut from the district's budget.

By the end of first grade, teachers' aides were gone; my daughter was spending class time tutoring other children. The custodian's hours were cut back. The restroom was dirty, always out of toilet paper; my daughter was afraid to use it.

In second grade, there were 32 children in her class. They shared tattered books and colored with broken nubs. The school lost its librarian, and music and physical education instructors. The remaining teachers were forced to take salary cuts.