CARLSBAD - Carlsbad Unified School District trustees approved preliminary site plans Thursday night for a new high school to be built on a breezy hillside in northeast Carlsbad with an ocean view.

And on a gloomier note at Thursday's school board meeting, the trustees heard a report on the state's looming $14.5 billion fiscal crisis.

If the Legislature approves Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan for across-the-board 10 percent reductions in state funding, the district will need to cut $4.5 million from its 2008-09 budget - a year after trustees trimmed $2 million in costs from 2007's $80 million budget to give teachers raises.

In addition to next year's proposed cuts, the governor is calling for immediate reductions of $360 million for schools across the state.

The district may be able absorb its share of the midyear cuts - about $600,000 - but that will "severely limit" the district's budgetary choices next year, said Walter Freeman, the district's assistant superintendent of business.

Superintendent John Roach proposed a "three-pronged approach" to preparing for the looming fiscal crisis.

Suzanne O'Connell, the district's assistant superintendent of instruction, will lead a committee to gauge the effects of all proposed cuts in school programs and personnel, Roach told the board. Second, Carol Van Voren, principal of Jefferson Elementary, will lead a drive to develop private funding sources to replace the shortfall. And third, Roach challenged all five trustees to begin lobbying state legislators to oppose Schwarzenegger's plan to suspend Proposition 98, the initiative approved by voters in 1988 to guarantee that schools were adequately funded each year regardless of economic swings.

Trustee Lisa Rodman said she will host a public meeting next week to begin planning the lobbying effort.

"I am not pleased to hear that report," board President Elisa Williamson told Freeman at the end of his presentation.

However, trustees said they were pleased to hear that state's school construction money - held in a separate fund - is safe from the governor's budgetary ax.

The district qualifies for about $21 million in school construction funds to use along with $198 million in Proposition P construction bonds approved by Carlsbad voters in 2006.

Plans for spending a $95 million chunk of Prop. P funds came a step closer Wednesday night when trustees approved preliminary plans for the district's second high school. The district is planning to build the school, as yet unnamed, on a hilly 56 acres at the corner of College Avenue and Cannon Road.

The site plans show two-story classroom buildings across the top of the hill with food services and administrative offices underneath. The gym and a performing arts building surround an open courtyard. The stadium, sports fields, tennis courts and parking lots are planned at the base of the hill.

- Contact staff writer Philip K. Ireland at (760) 901-4043 or pireland@nctimes.com.