District regrets mix-up on class sizes

A Santa Ana Unified School District administrator has apologized to grade school teachers for a district policy that called for falsifying class rosters in order to retain state funding for small classes, and pledged that rosters would be corrected to accurately reflect the number of students in each classroom, according to teachers and a union official.

The apologies were delivered during meetings at at least six elementary schools and came just days before independent auditors were to begin investigating the district’s class-size reduction program.

The probe was prompted by a Times report that the district falsified documents and misused substitute teachers in an effort to retain the $16 million in state funding it receives for keeping kindergarten through third-grade classes at an average ratio of 20 students per teacher.

Teachers at the grade schools said their classes were actually much larger than the district was contending -- accusations that, if proved, could cost the district some of the state funds.

“We just have to move forward and work together as a team so we can identify things that weren’t working properly,” said Angela Burrell, spokeswoman for the cash-strapped, 54,800-student district.

Christine Anderson, the district’s executive director of human resources, visited elementary schools last week that were affected by the controversy and is continuing the effort this week.

“We want to be proactive and talk directly to teachers,” she said. “Communication, I think, has been an issue for us. We are sharing the story of [class-size reduction] and what’s happened over the last couple weeks.”

The controversy became public last week after a Times article detailed the district’s attempt to meet the 20-students-per-teacher cap by moving students off class rosters, even though they remained in the same classrooms. Substitute teachers who were supposed to be helping in these classrooms were instead often being shifted to other assignments.

The problem arose in part because class sizes didn’t shrink as expected. A district-wide shortage of substitutes also contributed.

Eight teachers at Washington Elementary School acted as whistle-blowers, stepping forward after they were asked to sign attendance rosters that omitted several of their students.

Documents revealed that school officials created a second-grade roster of students for a class that didn’t exist.

The phantom classroom appeared to reduce the number of second-graders in existing classrooms -- allowing the average class size to fall below 20.5 and giving the district an additional $1,024 per student per year.

A substitute teacher was assigned to the nonexistent class, but several teachers at the school said the substitute spent only a few hours over the last month in their classrooms instructing students on her roster.

After the article on the falsified class rosters, teachers at seven more Santa Ana elementary schools recounted similar allegations against the district.

Anderson said she was telling teachers that the district made an “inadvertent mistake”; no one at the schools would be blamed for the matter; the substitute teachers hired to assist in class-size reduction efforts would be allowed to stay; teachers’ attendance rosters would be corrected; and that teachers shouldn’t sign any inaccurate rosters.

During a visit to Wilson Elementary School on Monday, Anderson met with about 10 teachers in the library after school. “She apologized in the name of the district and [Supt.] Jane Russo and said she was sorry about what had happened, that it was a mistake, and the teachers are not at fault,” said Susan Mercer, treasurer of Santa Ana Educators Assn., who attended the meeting.

“She said that it was a mistake and they honestly thought what they were doing was OK but then when this happened, they checked with their lawyers and it wasn’t,” the union treasurer said.

Anderson told the teachers that the district may lose some funding after it corrected the rosters, but that teachers shouldn’t worry, Mercer said.

“She sounded very sincere,” Mercer said. “Personally, I think it was a very difficult thing for her to do, to go to the schools and admit this was a big mistake.”

But some teachers took a dimmer view of the meetings. A teacher at Taft Elementary School, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, said she attended a meeting with Anderson and a couple of dozen teachers after school Monday.

“They really thought they were going to get away with it,” said the teacher, who has 22 students in her class but whose roster was altered to say she had 18.

“They’re just backpedaling now. They’re just making it like they didn’t intend to do that.”

School board member John Palacio said he was concerned that the rosters being corrected could hinder the independent audit. But Russo and Anderson said the corrected rosters would be attached to the inaccurate rosters, and no records would be destroyed.

*

seema.mehta@latimes.com