J Kenneth Jones

Ginny Kutcher's two children have received a well-rounded education in the Saddleback Valley Unified School District. Sixteen-year-old Heidi, a student at El Toro High School, learned to play the flute in the district's elementary music program. Her sister, Lisa, an El Toro High graduate, learned to play the clarinet. Both ended up in the El Toro High band. And the girls got more than just music lessons. In addition to their regular classes, they had the benefit of a well-trained support staff.

A new law that allows counties to levy a fee against cities and school districts for assessing and collecting property taxes will have a potentially devastating financial impact on Orange County schools and ultimately could lead to layoffs and program cuts, according to education officials. The law, which goes into effect Jan.

Orange County Education Supt. Robert D. Peterson labors in a strange kind of obscurity. He is one of the highest-paid public educators in the state-- only two elected officials in the county make more--and he sits at the helm of a sprawling $66-million-a-year educational bureaucracy. And yet, after 23 years and six countywide elections, Peterson still maintains a low political profile.

Shortly after William J. Popejoy took over as Orange County's chief executive, he faced a crisis. He had set a date for giving county supervisors a list of county assets that could be sold. Department heads, however, had pulled together a uselessly massive inventory of county-owned property. Much more was needed. In a bind, Popejoy turned to trusted advisers from his past: Neil N. Stolz and Paul S.

Orange County's most recent high school graduates generally outscored their peers across the state and nation in the Scholastic Aptitude Test, while the average scores in most local districts showed modest gains from the previous year's performance. Nationally, SAT scores rose slightly for the second straight year and the downward spiral of most ethnic students' scores halted.