Starving The Schools

By NANCY GIBBS

Every spring around this time, Gregory Gorbach gets fired. He currently teaches 10th-grade science at Folsom High School outside Sacramento, and he's good at his job. Last month, right on schedule, the principal called him in and handed him a pink slip. But sometime over the summer, once the school district figures out how much money it really has to spend, it may hire Gorbach again. This pattern doesn't do a lot for his morale. "I like teaching," he says, "but if I have to, I'll leave it. I don't feel teachers should have to carry society's burdens."

Here are some of the burdens Gorbach carries: in four of the past eight years, in schools in Ohio and New York as well as California, he has taught without any textbooks at all. Those that he absolutely needs, he pays for himself. "Homework is pretty well out of the question," he says. At one point he had an annual paper budget of 2,000 sheets for five classes of 28 children each. So if each student used one sheet a day, he would run out in three weeks. "If I want to give a test, I buy the paper myself." Most years he spends several hundred dollars of his own money on basic supplies. "And I've been in schools where the budget is a lot smaller."

There is nothing unusual about Gorbach, except that he may be luckier than many teachers. During this spring season of fiscal bloodletting, school ) districts are slicing budgets, and a sense of panic is spreading. One by one, districts are cutting foreign languages, art and music classes, even after- school sports. Class sizes are expanding, and the school year is getting shorter. And every one of these trends is about to get worse, as states are forced to choose between extra cops or extra classrooms, health care or welfare, higher taxes or less of everything else.

Back in election year 1990, when education was championed as the answer to everything from reducing poverty to increasing competitiveness, rare was the politician who proposed real cuts in school spending. But 1991, the year of recession, falling revenues and rising red ink, has changed all that. Governors are realizing that they cannot saw away at basic services while leaving education untouched. Republican William Weld in Massachusetts, Democrat Mario Cuomo in New York and Independent Lowell Weicker Jr. in Connecticut, hardly ideological bedfellows, have all decided to cut school budgets. Like other embattled Governors, they are also trying to shift resources from rich school districts to poor ones and encourage creative and cost-effective proposals for education reform.

In California, a rich state with weak public schools and a $12.6 billion budget shortfall, Republican Governor Pete Wilson has asked the legislature to suspend a law that guarantees education 40% of the state's outlays. Last week teachers, parents and politicians flooded the capital to protest his decision. "I'd give up a pay raise if they'd lower my class size," said fourth- grade teacher Melissa Stepanick of Fruit Ridge Elementary School. "I can't be effective with 33 kids." That is no wonder when 1 in 4 California children lives in poverty, 1 in 5 speaks English as a second language, and the school population is growing by 200,000 a year. Says Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin: "It is ridiculous to talk about the competitiveness of California in some global market overseas when we are tearing the heart out of our education system."

Sadly, California is no exception. Everywhere, schools are staggering at the thought of what lies ahead. In Brockton, Mass., any child who lives within two miles of school no longer qualifies for bus service, so an extra 1,000 have to walk every day. The company that supplies the schools' milk has threatened to stop delivery this week unless its bill is paid -- the district owes about $2.5 million to its creditors. Central Falls, R.I., has asked the state to take over its schools rather than be forced to fire almost 100 of its 200 teachers. Montgomery County, Md., an affluent suburb of Washington, must locate $65 million in savings next year. "We're trying to find a way not to cut into classroom programs," says Brian Porter, director of information for the school system, "but not hurting classroom teaching is next to impossible."

Many communities have tried to head off the cuts by proposing local tax referendums -- which time and again are rejected by voters who are already being socked with higher taxes at every level. There is a dismal psychology at work here: some homeowners are unwilling to pay more to educate other people's kids; some parents, out of ignorance or indifference, tolerate mediocrity in their local schools. And some are simply unwilling to pour money down what seems to them to be a black hole. In Gwinnett County, Ga., voters were so disgusted at junketing county commissioners that they voted down a bond issue for schools. They feared that the money would be wasted -- and besides, many argued, having computers in the classrooms was a frivolous expense.

Poor communities are looking for the courts to save them, Robin Hood-style, by shifting funds from richer ones. "There are school districts with swimming pools," growls Steve Honselman, a school-board vice president in Illinois' Casey-Westfield district. "Meanwhile, we don't have advanced-placement classes." He and his wife are part of a class action demanding that the state equalize school funding. "With three children in the schools," says Honselman, "we've tried everything from bake sales to raffles to raise funds. But we can't raise enough." Last week Texas failed for a third time to come up with a court-ordered plan to redistribute funds. The state supreme court has threatened to cut off all school funding, or else will enact its own plan if the legislature does not act. "It would mean total chaos," says Houston school superintendent Joan Raymond.

Behind all the anguish lies a sense of an opportunity missed and now lost. The 1980s saw steadily increased funding for education -- but little to show for it in improved performance. "It should have been a time of unprecedented reform," says Ted Sanders, a veteran classroom teacher who is now Deputy Secretary of Education in Washington. "But there was no dramatic turnaround. It raises questions about how we are spending what we have to get what we're looking for." In the prevailing climate of austerity, the education bureaucracy can no longer protect the central office while firing teachers. Teachers' unions are finding it harder to defend lifelong tenure while allowing the youngest, often most energetic instructors to be laid off. And the districts are reviewing programs for special-needs students, which are often exempt from cost-cutting plans that are slicing deep into core programs at every other school. In New York City, a special-education student costs about $16,000 a year, in contrast to $7,000 for the typical student.

Officials in Washington express skepticism that more money would solve the problem. "The mere fact that a budget is going up or down doesn't tell me anything," says Charles Kolb, a policy aide to President Bush. "What we need is a debate on why the country spends more per student than all but three countries in the world, but gets less." That debate may well be launched by the newly confirmed Education Secretary, Lamar Alexander, who brings to his post a record of reform from his years as Governor of Tennessee.

Some experiments in creative management are already under way. In Miami a private company will be taking over one school and running it next year. The school of education at Boston University has been managing all the public schools in Chelsea, Mass., for almost two years. Milwaukee has given some poor students vouchers to attend private schools if they choose. Iowa, Arkansas, Utah, Ohio and several other states are experimenting with various forms of school choice.

But all the bright new ideas in the world will be of little use to teachers if they have 50 children in their classrooms, no supplies and no security in their jobs. It is also true that the present crisis in education -- both fiscal and philosophical -- may present reformers with an opportunity to fix a system that is badly broken. In the process they are drawing on the will and energy of parents, employers, legislators and anyone else who can teach them a lesson.

With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston, Ann Blackman/Washington and James Willwerth/Sacramento