Torrance Schools May End Bus Service, Cut Jobs in Budget Crunch : Education: Officials must slash $2.9 million in wake of Deukmejian’s budget proposal. Their recommendations have created an uproar.

Faced with a need to cut nearly $2.9 million from next year’s budget, Torrance Unified School District officials have recommended ending all daily school bus service and eliminating more than 40 staff positions.

Their proposals have created an uproar in the community, which is expected to spill over into school board chambers on Monday night, when officials will begin talking about which cuts to make.

“If we have to go through with these, it would be incredibly devastating,” board member Bill Blischke said. “Things look very bad this year, the worst I’ve ever seen them.”

District officials blame the pending cuts in their $79-million budget on Gov. George Deukmejian’s initial state budget proposal, which calls for most increases in education spending to go to districts with increasing enrollments.

Most South Bay districts, including Torrance, have declining enrollments.

“It’s very simple,” said Harvey Oelkers, assistant superintendent for business services. “The governor’s budget proposes a 3% cost-of-living increase, which is not adequate to meet our budget for next year.”

Although final state budget decisions will not be made until this summer, Oelkers said planning for possible local cuts must begin now.

“Between now and then, the picture can improve, but we can’t wait until then because if you’re going to affect anybody’s position, you have to give the notice in March,” he said.

Officials began sending out dozens of notices to administrators, teachers and counselors late last week, warning them that they may be reassigned or even laid off in the coming school year.

Among Supt. Ed Richardson’s 29 recommendations are proposals to eliminate the four high school English teaching positions created last year to reduce class sizes, both of the district’s staff development experts, three vocal music teachers, three instrumental music teachers and seven remedial reading positions.

The recommendations also call for immediate reductions of $283,000 in this year’s budget through a hiring freeze, a moratorium on all conference attendance and dropping additional instructional aides hired at the beginning of the school year for elementary and middle school classrooms.

A secondary list of 11 alternate proposals includes cutting eight high school coaching positions, eliminating two assistant high school principal positions and their secretaries, replacing school nurses with nursing assistants and replacing 17 high school counselors with clerical technicians who could fill out paper work but do no counseling.

Although parents expressed disgust at the proposed teaching reductions, they said the recommendation to cut bus service was particularly infuriating to those families whose neighborhood campuses have been closed in recent years.

“My phone has been ringing for three hours straight,” said Heidi Ashcraft, PTA president of Bert Lynn Middle School. “We were promised at the time our schools were closed here on the west end that our children would be bused.

“We are talking about a lot of dangerous streets these children (would be) forced to cross, and it would be awful if a child’s life were taken or a child was maimed just so money could be taken from transportation and shifted elsewhere,” she said.

Under current district policy, any elementary or middle school student who lives more than 1 1/4 miles from school is entitled to a bus ride. High school students who live more than two miles from campus also may ride a bus.

Oelkers said 1,830 of the district’s 19,000 students currently ride buses to school each day.

The program was targeted, he said, because the governor’s budget allows no increase in spending for home-to-school busing, which costs the district about $400,000 each year.

Bill Franchini, director of the Torrance Teachers Assn., said his group will present several alternate ways to save money at the board’s Monday meeting.

The board’s agenda calls for the association to make its initial contract proposals for next year just before the board discusses the proposed spending cuts.

Franchini said the association will propose an early retirement plan that he believes could entice as many as 150 senior teachers, who earn as much as $20,000 more than starting instructors, to leave the district. He estimates the plan would save at least $1 million.

The association also plans to ask for major changes in health benefits, which Franchini said would save as much as $700,000.

District officials declined to comment on the association’s proposals until they could be formally presented to the board.

“I do know that none of us want any of these things to happen,” board President Owen Griffith said. “We’ve been through some cuts before and it’s a very painful process.”