For local public schools, 2003 became a year that many students, teachers and administrators would probably like to forget.

Sure, there were successes. Four out of five schools raised their test scores in North County. A handful of new schools went up, and about dozen began construction aiming to open in 2004. Ten local campuses earned the title of "California Distinguished School," the state's top honor for high test scores and teacher quality. Students pulled together to support their peers as their fathers, mothers, siblings and friends left for war and braved the local fires.

But 2003 will more than likely be remembered as the year school district budgets all but collapsed, taking teachers, counselors, school bus service, and dozens of beloved school programs along with them.

It was the year security guards began showing up at school board meetings to protect officials from protesters, employees facing layoffs, and tearful students begging board members to stop the budget cuts. Districts cut about $80 million from their budgets over the course of the year to weather state and local budget problems and to even out years of overspending before finding themselves in the red.

Budget 'cannibalism'

Those cuts defined local schools in 2003. It was the year classes got bigger to save money on teachers. The year many yellow school buses disappeared for lack of funds, forcing thousands of students to crowd the sidewalks, pile into city buses and hitch rides from friends and neighbors to get to school. The year music classes went silent and supply closets went bare. The year schools' bank accounts began to shrink quickly, and everybody -- everybody -- in local public schools found themselves diving to grab onto the money that remained.

One school district superintendent called the budget frenzy a display of cannibalism. High school band members wanted debate teams cut. The debate teams wanted the football teams cut. The football teams wanted school busing cut. Parents who relied on busing wanted programs for immigrant students cut. And so it went for months and months, the state's Sacramento budget crisis being played out in hallways and classrooms throughout North County.

Come this spring, those security guards will probably return to their positions at local school board meetings as districts face what is projected to be yet another year of slicing their budgets to stay in the black. And district officials say students and parents should probably expect another year of disappearing employees, services and supplies as the state's budget crisis continues.

Exit exam delayed

Though budget news dominated most of the 2003 headlines, a few other school stories made state and national news this year.

Incoming high school seniors, for example, caught a huge break in July, when the State Board of Education reneged on a promise to force every student to pass a test before graduating.

After three years of threatening that the state's high school seniors would not graduate if they couldn't pass a standardized exit exam, the state board backed off its do-or-die stance on the test, known as the California High School Exit Exam. Much to the delight of soon-to-be seniors, the board pushed back the exit exam requirement so that the class of 2006 -- this year's sophomores -- will instead be the first required to pass for graduation.

The delay, which board members said was necessary to let schools catch up from years of outdated textbooks and lesson plans, relieved thousands of local seniors who hadn't passed the test. But it didn't sit well with local lawmakers, who said high school graduates should be able to pass the basic test and accused the board of bending to pressure from anti-testing teachers unions. Temecula Assemblyman Ray Haynes said the state was "running scared" from the exam and its much-anticipated day of reckoning.

That judgment day was postponed a couple of years, but won't disappear unless lawmakers vote to do away with the test requirement altogether. Such a vote seems unlikely by the Legislature in Sacramento, where both parties are riding the popular mantra that high schools shouldn't allow students to sail through to graduation without knowing basic math and English skills.

So for now, unless teachers unions, parent advocate groups or lawsuits get in the way of the test in 2006, the message to this year's sophomores is clear: Study up.

Academic success with failures

Academically, the year was filled with paradoxes. School officials celebrated successes and grieved over failures, sometimes in the same breath.

Four out of five North County schools raised their standardized test scores in 2003, and poor and minority students seemed to be improving faster than white and affluent students. But even with the improving scores, campuses found themselves facing stringent new government standards that labeled hundreds of schools as failures.

Thanks to a newly implemented federal law called the No Child Left Behind Act, a handful of those campuses, including some in Vista, Escondido and Pauma Valley, were slapped with punishments for not meeting those standards. Dozens more will face sanctions next year if they don't improve. Schools that continue to miss the federal mark could be taken over by the state government in the next few years.

Achievement gap promises

School leaders have vowed to keep that from happening by raising scores, especially among black, Latino and immigrant students, whose collective scores continue to lag behind those of affluent and white students. Nearly six out of 10 North County black and Latino students from the class of 2005 were still failing the exit exam as of last summer. Based on math scores from the exam, just two out of 10 white and Asian students were failing.

In 2003, for the first time, superintendents from all 42 San Diego County districts pledged to narrow those score discrepancies, known to educators as "the achievement gap," by raising scores among historically underperforming groups.

"This is an absolutely critical issue, this gap facing our schools," said county superintendent Rudy Castruita in September.

"We talk about the achievement gap, we constantly hear people say -- in my language -- 'Those pobrecitos, those poor Latino kids, those African-American kids, they just can't learn like everyone else,'" Castruita said. "That's just not true. Every child in our schools can and will do better."

To escape sanctions and to keep thousands of students from failing out of high school, Castruita and his fellow school leaders will have to make good on that promise.

Contact staff writer Erin Walsh at (760) 739-6644 or ewalsh@nctimes.com.