A high-profile and lauded dropout-prevention program is falling victim to budget cuts -- although top Los Angeles school officials insist that they'll provide a more effective program in its place.
The precarious Diploma Project is emblematic of the financial crisis slowly working its way across the nation's second-largest school system as ripples of a statewide budget shortfall touch counselors, teachers and other school employees whose work directly affects children enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Nearly 9,000 employees -- about 10% of the full-time workforce -- received notice of a possible layoff this month as the district seeks to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its nearly $6-billion general fund. But there's more going on than financial pain.
Reshaping system
After taking the helm in January, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, one of the country's most experienced educators, has attempted to reshape the school system. Cortines is seizing the moment to trim or gut some of the central bureaucracy, while also moving dollars and responsibility to schools. The superintendent wants schools to decide for themselves whether to pay for additional counselors, arts programs and librarians, among other things.
The new setup must save money, but it also should be more effective, he said.
"Everything I'm attempting to do is about improving the system," Cortines said.
"Ray is confronting the budget challenge by furthering an agenda he believes in," said David Rattray, a Cortines supporter and top official with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. The "current environment makes change more achievable and more difficult to retreat from."
Some insiders, however, suggest that Cortines is slashing more than necessary given the impending arrival of federal stimulus funds. And for all its flaws, the central bureaucracy also is "the thin line of public accountability," said former school board member David Tokofsky, a consultant with the administrators union. Backers of the dropout program plan to appeal today to the school board, which ultimately would have to approve Cortines' budget plan.
The 3-year-old, $10-mil- lion Diploma Project, which assigns counselors to 49 high schools and 31 middle schools, was launched in the wake of bad publicity over alarming dropout rates and the district's determination to confront them. Schools with the highest dropout rates, according to state figures, include Jefferson High in South Los Angeles, listed at 52.1%, and Belmont High, west of downtown, at 51%.
