Venice High Makes Personnel and Program Cuts for Upcoming Year

A slowly shrinking pool of resources has prompted staff and program cutbacks at Venice High School for the upcoming school year. 

A part-time math teacher position is being eliminated, as well as a French and culinary arts teacher. At the same time, stipends for extracurricular activities such as yearbook, journalism and the marching band are being cut in half for the school year that starts Sept. 7.   

The math teaching position was principally responsible for interventions with failing students in Algebra 1 courses, said the Los Angeles Unified School District's James Noble. 

This year, that extra support will not be available, Noble said.

In addition, academic coordinators to support yearbook, journalism, marching band and chemical safety activities are seeing a 50 percent reduction, Noble said.

Venice High staffers are among the nearly 2,000 LAUSD teachers who have been laid off this year. Five sections of French will no longer exist with the elimination of a single French teacher, Noble said.

The school is also losing a culinary arts teacher. Efforts are under way to turn the department into a Regional Occupational Program and secure extra funding through the ROP stream, Noble said.

The cuts will also affect nightly maintenance operations. Six hours’ worth of sweeping, mopping and trash-collecting services per night will no longer be taking place. 

The school will rely more heavily on students putting trash in cans, Noble said.

Venice High's international relations magnet, which immerses students in a foreign culture, will see its per-student funding drop from $22 in the last school year to $17 for this one, Noble said.

Other reductions include a temporary personnel account for supervision of games and response to on-campus incidents. 

“It shows us distributing trends, even though the district was able to demonstrate superior academic achievement across almost all different education reform models,” Noble said.

He said the district and board are in a tight position. The school district is quickly running out of places to cut, he said.

The full impact of the cuts at Venice likely won’t be visible until school begins, said Gayle Pollard-Terry, deputy director of communications and media relations with the LAUSD.

“That’s when parents realize, ‘Oh my goodness, my child is struggling with algebra and there’s no extra help or support,” Pollard-Terry said.

In the big picture, K-12 education actually saw little change in funding levels from last year, said Edgar Cabral, a K-12 education analyst with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office in Sacramento. Funds declined only 1.5 percent statewide from last year.

That’s because of about $7 billion in federal funding allocated two years ago. Schools have incorporated temporary federal funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Ed Jobs Act, both designed to cushion the blow of declining state funding and put teachers to work.

But that funding—a significant amount, Cabral said—will be ending at the conclusion of the next fiscal year. 

“It helped a lot of things. ... It would be a lot worse for schools if it wasn’t for that money helping,” Cabral said. “As the money goes away, the situation will be different.”

Further cuts may be needed if state funding doesn’t increase, he said.

The evaporation of federal funds at the end of the year is a pivotal concern moving forward, Cabral said. Another lurking concern for administrators: midyear “trigger” cuts included in the California budget package approved in June.   

If state revenue comes in $2 billion below assumptions in January, a round of midyear cuts will follow.

This could be a significant blow to school districts statewide, with per-pupil funding dropping by hundreds of dollars, Cabral said. In addition to laying off teachers, cutting programs and dipping into bank reserves, schools will be allowed to reduce the school year by up to seven days.

At this point, though, it's too early to make predictions, Cabral said. The state will have a better picture of how it's doing economically by November, he added.