Paula Spence was already plenty busy.
As a vice principal at Manhattan Beach Mira Costa High, Spence was in charge of state-mandated testing; facilities; safety and security; supervision of employees and curriculum in the physical education and science departments; summer school; substitute teachers; technology; and ninth-grade discipline and special education.
Now she will oversee the school's athletic programs as well.
Because of cost cutting in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, Athletic Director Bob Fish has been reassigned to teach full time, leaving Spence to coordinate Mira Costa's 64 teams and 1,200 athletes.
Her biggest fear about the increased workload?
"That there's only 24 hours in a day," Spence said.
Said Fish: "She's going to have to learn on the fly."
Mira Costa isn't alone. Other schools are slashing coaching stipends, reducing schedules, curtailing travel, eliminating lower-level playoffs and increasing student fees because of budget cuts.
The Capistrano Unified School District is trimming about $420,000 by eliminating 37 coaching stipends in 15 sports at each of its six schools. Coaches, athletes and parents are attempting to make up the difference through fundraising efforts such as golf tournaments and ad sales in athletic programs.
"It's anything and everything," Aliso Niguel Athletic Director Mike Middlebrook said. "Sometimes in the past parents just wrote a check, but now families are struggling as well."
Similar fundraising is underway among the schools in the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, where the elimination of coaching stipends is expected to save about $80,000.
Rancho Santa Margarita Tesoro Principal Dan Burch, whose school operates within the Capistrano district, said schools are restricting travel to save on transportation costs.
"Some teams that were looking at longer travel, we're asking them to reconsider and look within the county or within the state for some of their tournaments," Burch said.
In the Garden Grove Unified School District, boys' and girls' athletes in basketball, volleyball, tennis, water polo and soccer will each play two fewer games to save the district $46,000 in transportation and officiating costs, district spokesman Alan Trudell said.
But at least those teams will have a chance to compete in the postseason.
