School's Out -- of Cash

By Richard Lacayo

In Kalkaska, Michigan, the students know all about cramming. They just tried to cram a year into seven months. Their spring term bumped to a halt last week when local school authorities, glumly eyeing a $1.5 million shortfall in their $8.2 million budget, chose to declare summer vacation in March. All through a cold winter, Matt Johnston had trudged to a 7:30 a.m. calculus class he hoped would earn him advanced-placement credit at college next year. Though teachers rushed through their lesson plans as the premature vacation neared, Johnston still wonders whether he should have stayed in bed. "The ((nationwide calculus)) test is in May," he complains, "but no one is prepared to take it."

After approving a hike in local property tax rates in 1989, Kalkaska voters, about a fourth of them retirees living on fixed incomes, have three times in the past year turned down requests for additional increases -- most recently by a 2-to-1 ratio. Some of them want officials of their rural district to follow the example of other cash-strapped schools and pare programs. "No way" is the reply from district leaders, who four years ago temporarily cut art, music, field trips and some athletic programs, then shortened the school day by an hour. "It was devastating," says Kalkaska High principal Jerry Judge. "This was a much better year."

What there was of it, at least. The predicament of Kalkaska's schools is not unusual, but their decision to shut down rather than slim down is. Making do has become the working philosophy of American education. After a long recession and an even longer era of citizen tax revolts, schools around the country are rebinding old textbooks, letting ceiling plaster crumble, cutting out art and sports programs or closing down for days at a time. All the while, parents and educators are wondering which cuts are tolerable, which fatal. Is it O.K. to use outdated history books? How badly outdated? What if there aren't even enough books to provide each student with a copy to take home at night?

This spring, the Clinton Administration will send Congress its major school legislation, which will include funds for Chapter 1, the program targeted at disadvantaged schools. But no one expects Washington to have much real impact on the school budget crisis. Federal dollars account for just 6% of public elementary and secondary education spending in the U.S.; local property taxes and state aid pay most of the bills.

The system produces lustrous mini-campuses in the most fortunate suburbs, scuffed and gloomy warehouses in the ghettos and maximum insecurity almost everywhere. Poorer districts are so desperate that 41 states have faced lawsuits challenging the statewide school finance formula, all with the goal of getting courts to compel legislatures to adopt a more equitable sharing of tax revenues. Under court pressure, Kentucky has developed a package of taxes to help fund education. In May Texas voters will be asked to approve a redistribution of property taxes.

In Illinois, where litigation is pending, one low-income district committed symbolic suicide last week. Arguing that it could never raise enough money from property taxes, the school board of North Chicago, 40 miles north of the city, voted simply to dissolve the district and shut down its eight schools. If the board's drastic plan is approved by county education officials, North Chicago's 4,300 students will be dispersed to schools in more prosperous surrounding communities -- a move the neighboring towns are sure to resist.

While the school board may have been trying to dramatize its plight, the problems are all too real. Though the North Chicago school district has one of the state's highest tax rates -- $7.33 per $100 of assessed value -- property assessments are so low that last year the district raised just $1,638 per student. By comparison, nearby Lake Forest, with a tax rate of only $1.32 per $100, collects $14,143 per student.

For struggling schools unwilling to contemplate self-extinction, slow starvation is the common alternative. The first targets to trim are often the precious "frills," the arts programs, foreign languages, after-school athletics that provide students with the lessons a traditional classroom cannot. Yet last fall all 72 public high schools in Chicago were nearly forced to eliminate sports altogether because of a $1.2 million budget shortfall. Only last-minute contributions from corporations such as Footlocker, Illinois Bell and Nike and such individual donations as $100,000 from Michael Jordan saved athletics for the year. In many states, the only way to earn a place on the varsity squad is not to be the fastest or the strongest but to be able to afford as much as a couple of hundred dollars to cover "pay for play" fees, transportation charges or equipment costs.

Budget crises can bring even more painful choices. With the current term heading into its last months, the supply cupboard is almost bare at Hayward * High School, a 1,565-student school just southeast of Oakland, California. "We are down to worrying about how much paper we use in a day," says English teacher Carolyn Aune. That's not the only reason why she makes fewer writing assignments lately. She already has too much work to correct, with 170 students in her five classes, 45 more than last year, an increase caused by rising enrollment and staff cuts. And because of overstuffed classrooms, there is limited hands-on participation in Hayward's chemistry labs -- too many safety concerns. Those have to be taken more seriously now that budget cuts have eliminated the school nurse. The librarian is also gone this year. So are seven after-school sports. "I'm really glad I'm graduating this year because so many things are being cut," says Mary Basurtf, a senior. "I feel sorry for the freshmen."

Hayward's troubles are an outgrowth of the statewide crisis in California's threadbare school system, which was among the nation's best. A lengthy economic slump has compounded problems created by the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes and sharply reduced school revenues. Between 1987 and 1992, unrestricted state funding for the 34 schools of the racially mixed Hayward district declined from $90 million to $65 million, even as the student population climbed from 18,000 to 21,125.

In those same years, California has seen an influx of immigrants, a rise in the number of kids with learning and behavioral problems, more latchkey children whose parents are working and hungry kids whose parents are not. "Schools are expected to provide more social services, more counseling, more psychological and nursing services," says Dan Moirao, superintendent of the Hayward Unified School District. "But because of low funding, we have difficulty just providing the basic teacher in front of the classroom with a textbook."

Simple numbers, hard consequences -- how does a school decide what stays, what goes? In the past two years, the Hayward district canceled a program that provided 34 specially trained teachers to help students who have reading problems. But it held on to six counselors, in part because of an outcry from parents who feared their children would not have guidance to make judgments about college and careers. Even six seemed too few to students puzzling over their prospects. "We have a million decisions to make, and there's no one here to talk to," complains Jared Mariconi, a senior. Mary Ann O'Toole, sole counselor at Hayward High, sees even more serious problems: "We've had two student deaths this year, and we don't even have time to talk to the kids."

Double duty for teachers and administrators is one way of making do. At Eisenhower Junior High in Darien, Illinois -- which is going through its sixth year of shrinking budgets -- the principal, Joseph Pedersen, has been known to cut the grass and replace the tile floor in the gym. He also covers one of the three cafeteria periods every day and does occasional service as a substitute teacher. On weekends he writes grant proposals, attempting to get state and private funds for programs he cannot otherwise afford. For good measure, he coaches the wrestling team from mid-November through the end of March. "It's a long season," he concedes.

At Eisenhower the student council has been enlisted as a cash cow, generating $1,500 a month in profit from its "market day," which allows fee- paying customers to buy food in bulk through the school. Through an agreement with the local parks authority, new public tennis courts are located on Eisenhower's grounds, where students can easily use them. Public money will pay for their upkeep. Parks officials are also considering a request from Pedersen to donate $5,000 for the school to buy eight computers. In return, Eisenhower would offer computer classes to the general public for a small fee that would cover teacher costs.

When Eisenhower isn't scrambling for pennies, it's pinching them. Rather than replace 20 aging microscopes, the school is investigating the purchase of a TV camera and monitor system that could display to an entire class the images seen through a single new microscope. In the home economics classes -- where half the enrollees are boys -- gas stoves have replaced the old electric ones, to take advantage of a local gas company's offer to give the school three stoves free if it purchased one. The district already squeezes out a 20% saving by stocking up on gas in the summer, when prices are lower, then storing the gas in Arkansas until it is needed.

Michigan school officials are wondering whether the Kalkaska schools should not have been pursuing more of the same kind of economy measures. Governor John Engler has appointed a five-member panel to meet with school officials about the possibility of reopening. State auditors arrived last week to look over the district's books. But the school board's decision to force a showdown + over funding has won strong support in neighboring districts. Some of them observed a moment of silence in classes last week on the day Kalkaska schools shut their doors. In the deserted halls of Kalkaska High, that moment may last until September.

With reporting by D. Blake Hallanan/San Francisco and Leslie Whitaker/Chicago