School Cuts Hit Library, Nursing Staffs Hard : Education: Board adopts $5.1 million in budget reductions. No layoffs are planned but 90 jobs will be eliminated.

The school board has approved $5.1 million in budget cuts after listening to three hours of impassioned testimony about how the proposed reductions could cripple library and health services.

The cuts will result in no layoffs in the Long Beach Unified School District, but services will be reduced. About 90 jobs will be eliminated or remain vacant in the state’s third-largest district, which has about 5,000 employees.

Cuts in the library and nursing staffs are the most controversial. Nurses will be reduced by as much as 14%; librarians by up to 17%. Both staffs will be reduced by attrition in the rapidly growing district.

“For many students, school is the only time they receive medical help and the only place students see the inside of a library,” said Felice Strauss, president of the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach. Strauss asked that the decision be postponed.

Only board member Bobbie Smith voted against the cuts Monday. She said that a one-week postponement would give members more time to consider alternatives. But her colleagues said they had all the information they needed and that cuts had to be made, no matter how painful.

Angry and frustrated librarians and nurses, some speaking through tears, said they are stretched too thin already. About 80 librarians and nurses crowded into the board meeting room. Dozens addressed the school board.

“Thousands of students are without health insurance or regular care providers,” Sandy Sanders, director of nursing services, said before the meeting. “Our kids are immigrants and poor. They don’t speak English. They don’t understand preventive health care. If we’re cut at all, the students will feel the loss of benefits. Youngsters can’t learn if they are absent or in pain no matter how good the education system is.”

Nurses came to the podium to tell of reporting physical and sexual abuse, preventing diabetic comas and treating undiscovered fractures.

Sanders told the board that parents use the school as a doctor’s office: “Youngsters are sent to school with the admonition, ‘Go to the nurse and see if you’re sick.’ ”

Librarians were as unhappy as the nurses. In this district of 72,000 students, libraries already are staffed at lower levels than in the mid-1960s, said Marilyn Larson, district library media specialist. Some elementary schools open their libraries only one day a week.

“My concern is the long-range impact of this,” librarian Don Kroll said. “Our students learn respect for a library by having one available.”

His Wilson High School students checked out 7,500 books last year. District elementary students took out more than a million books in all. Past funding shortages have already resulted in inadequate or out-of-date collections, some librarians said.

“I have books that say, ‘Someday, man will land on the moon,’ ” elementary librarian Sandy Patton said.

The total package of cuts includes reducing the clerical staff by one at each high school. The central administration will lose 14 positions.

In addition, the district will decrease the number of teachers it needs by dropping some classes in which enrollment falls and sending the students to other classes. Teachers who lose classes would then be transferred in midyear to other classes or more crowded schools, or they will become substitutes.

Such switches will disrupt student and teacher schedules, but will allow the district to save about 67 teacher salaries. Class size will increase as a result, but not above the district’s current standard, an average of 30 students per teacher. In all, the board trimmed less than 2% from next year’s estimated $368-million budget.

The financial picture in Long Beach is bright compared to some nearby districts. The Montebello Unified School District, with about 33,000 students, plans to cut its payroll by more than 200 jobs. It has slashed $19 million from a $145-million budget. Cuts in Montebello will result in about 200 layoffs, district officials said.

Officials in the neighboring Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest district with more than 625,000 students, are debating how to reduce their budget by $341 million, or about 8%.

Small districts are suffering too. The Little Lake City School District, which serves about 4,000 students from Santa Fe Springs, Norwalk and Downey, has canceled its music and art programs, among other cuts.

Long Beach is making cuts in anticipation of getting less school funds from the state. State legislators already are debating using money once set aside for schools to help cure the state’s own budget deficit. And a difficult year for school funding statewide is almost a certainty, district officials said.

If the expected cuts occur, the district also would cancel the two-year, 16% raise Long Beach teachers recently negotiated.

The state funding crunch has forced the district into unpleasant choices, board members said. “It’s either sickness or illiteracy,” Harriet Williams said, summing up the board’s options on nursing and library services.

Supt. Tom Giugni corrected her, saying that reducing both staffs was needed to balance next year’s budget.

“With regard to nurses and librarians, I would really want assurance that this is a one-year thing,” Williams said.

“I can’t tell you that,” Giugni answered. “Next year may be worse.”

Steps to Balance Long Beach Unified Schools Budget

* Cut 14 administrators and clerical workers $773,000

* Reduce travel and conference attendance $150,000

* Cut vandalism fund $708,000

* Hiring freeze on librarians and nurses at least $150,000

* Reassign teachers to different classes or schools in midyear as enrollment changes $822,000

* Raise more classes to an average of 30 students $2,207,000

* Decrease need for student transportation by adding portable classrooms $180,000

* Reduce non-teaching staff by one at each high school $150,000

TOTAL: $5,140,000