Francine Stewart graduated from Monterey High School in 1989 after attending Monte Vista elementary and Colton Middle schools. She’s a part of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District (MPUSD), so much so, in fact, that she’s now a second-grade teacher at Marina Vista elementary. And for the last year she has represented her fellow teachers as president of the Monterey Bay Teachers Association.

She believes her school system is in trouble.

“I call this the ‘lay-off table,’” she says, pointing to a pile of papers and documents inside the front door of the association offices off Camino El Estero. One of the documents on that table is a list of 86 teachers the financially-troubled district has notified it might very well lay off this year.

Stewart spent Tuesday at the school district annex on Ryan Ranch Road with the soon-to-be jobless teachers as they appealed their cases to an administrative judge.

The lay-offs are just one symptom of a financial malady the school district can’t seem to shake. With a pressing need to trim $2.5 million from its 2004-05 budget, the district board of trustees has been looking for schools to close. It’s already decided to close Monte Vista School and turn Colton Middle School into a K-8. (Closed in the last few years are Del Monte and Larkin elementary schools.) The closures and threat of closures have ignited angry responses from parents, even dividing communities along race and class lines.

That’s just one problem in what’s now a bare-bones district, crippled 10 years ago by the loss of students and federal money from Fort Ord’s closure, financial mismanagement in the following years, and now a state budget crisis that pervades nearly every public institution in California.

So severe is the tension locally that there’s talk in some quarters of breaking up the district.

There are about 11,300 students in the MPUSD, spread among 20 schools in Monterey, Seaside and Marina. Nobody relishes the idea of shutting down schools—not the parents, the students or the teachers.

“Our position on closing schools is to keep schools open,” Stewart says. “When you close schools, you disrupt kids. You disrupt parents, teachers and staff. Everything goes into chaos.”

The mood among teachers has soured. This is spelled out in a special edition of the association’s newsletter, published on April 1. The four-page flyer includes the results of a teacher survey, and the results are not encouraging.

More than 300 of the association’s 750 members responded. Of that number, 276 said they were not satisfied with the performance of Superintendent Dr. Dan Callahan. The same number said their concerns are not heard by the superintendent.

Possibly more disturbing, 310 said they would not encourage a friend to take a teaching job in the MPUSD, while 43 said they would.

The last question asked teachers to rate morale. Only 10 teachers said morale was “high,” 71 said it was “medium” and 285 described morale among teachers as “low.”

Contacted earlier this week, Callahan said he has indeed seen the survey results.

“I don’t have a response,” he said. Asked if he had any thoughts on the question regarding teacher morale, Callahan said, “I have no comment about the survey.”

Stewart says the teachers have spoken.

“The majority are not happy with his performance,” she says. “I don’t want to speak for them but what I am hearing from the members is this arrogance and condescending attitude that drips from him rubs people the wrong way—teachers and parents. To contrast that I’ve also had people call me and say he’s a visionary. I’m not sure what they mean.”

Stewart says she has not heard from Callahan about the survey but some administrators told her they were “sickened” by it.

Comments included with survey responses amplify the bad juju. They range from hopeful (“Encourage the idea of employees giving regular feedback to the administration, every person”) to dreary (“Lowest morale I’ve seen in 25 years”) to vengeful (“STRIKE!”).

Some call for marches and rallies, some call for a no-confidence vote and some for “serious demonstration, no juggling, no dogs, no hooting at cars.” One said, “Wish I could retire!”

A work stoppage looms close as the teachers’ association has already held an unofficial strike vote.

“We did a survey on that but we didn’t publish the result,” Stewart says. “That was before things were as bad as they are now and it was about 50 percent, which is much higher than I expected.

“To strike is serious. We’re basically saying, ‘throw us a bone, or half a bone, and we’ll hang in there with you. But if you continue to ignore our concerns, I don’t know where it will go.’ It depends on the members.”

Parents feel the low mood too. As one parent of a district third grader said, “There’s just a lot of uncertainty now... It’s just been a whole big ugly mess.”

That said, some are doing what they can, besides agitating to keep the schools open.

Charles Eldred of Monterey has organized an ambitious fund-raising project to prevent school closures. With two kids in Monterey schools, he has started the Education Foundation for MPUSD with the objective of raising $740,000 by early May to keep any schools in the district from closing. Already the foundation has taken in a $10,000 donation, and Eldred says he’s working on some major donors, but as of this week only about $50,000 has come in.

“Our goal is to first help the district stop the closures for one year and let a long-term management plan get done,” he says. “Then we want to look at district-wide programs for libraries, arts, music and reading.”

Although he has kids in Monterey schools, he says his interest is not so much in keeping them in Monterey, but, as owner of Cypress Coast Physical Therapy, he wants to have an educated workforce.

“What I am afraid of is that we’re going to impact all the schools,” he says. “Even if you close schools in Monterey you’re going to have a heck of an effect on Seaside. It’s not so clear as Monterey versus Seaside. It’s across the board.”

At the April 6 meeting of the Monterey City Council, leaders and officials discussed the possibility of using city money to help cover school district shortfalls. Although the city has financial problems of its own, Monterey benefits from hotel tax income that helps keep the city polished and shiny. But legal restraints prevent it from helping the school district. In such an environment, and with local money channeled through Sacramento, Eldred says, such school foundations are needed to bridge the gap.

“It’s the only way you can get local money into schools,” he says. “There’s just not enough money coming back from Sacramento.”

Family income levels in the district range from wealthy to not wealthy at all. There are about 11,400 students in the district and with a need for $740,000 to prevent the disruption of school closures, the per capita cost is actually not that high. “Sixty-three dollars per student would do it,” Eldred says.