If there had been rafters, somebody would have been hanging from them.
As it was, every seat was taken. One young woman plopped on the floor, next to a microwave oven. A young man stood in the corner, shifting from one foot to the other. Three teens scrunched on top of a desk. Everyone's attention was riveted on the slight, soft-spoken man pacing the small patch of bare linoleum in front of them.
It was a scene to warm the heart of any musician or stand-up comic. Alas, John Collier isn't an entertainer. He is a teacher, and this was his third period U.S. history class at Fairfax High School on the city's Westside. Forty-five students were shoehorned into a classroom designed for perhaps 30 -- and this on a day when three students were absent.
The impact of California's budget cuts has varied from school to school. Because of the patchwork of federal and state funding for education, some campuses have felt the pinch far less than others. But at schools like Fairfax, hard hit by the $6 billion in education reductions enacted by the Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, this is shaping up to be one difficult year.
"I'm very frustrated," Collier said. "I mean, it's a good class -- it's an honors class, and the kids are really good. But it's unreasonable to ask me to teach a class of 48 kids and give attention to everybody."
Theoretically, the budget cuts have hit almost every school district equally. But some districts, especially those with growing enrollment, have weathered the storm because they salted money away during flush years or extracted significant concessions from labor unions, according to Scott Plotkin, executive director of the California School Boards Assn.
Glendale Unified, for instance, has seen "fairly minimal" cuts this year, largely because it has tapped into reserves built up over several years, Chief Financial Officer Eva Lueck said. So far, the district has maintained a 20-student maximum in almost all its kindergarten through third-grade classes, she said.
Long Beach Unified, too, has been able to avoid big bumps in class sizes by cutting in other areas, spokesman Chris Eftychiou said. Still, officials in both districts said they might not be able to hold on much longer.
"We're right on that threshold where we've cut to the bone, and if we don't see the budget situation change rather quickly, it's likely that we'll see larger class sizes in the near future, probably in the primary grades," Eftychiou said. "It's an expensive endeavor to keep a 20:1 ratio in the lower grades."
