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Teacher layoffs may result from budget crunch
| Monday, Jan 28 2008 10:15 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Jan 28 2008 10:20 PM
Jobs could be on the line in districts throughout the county as schools see budgets shrink by as much as 10 to 15 percent next school year.
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this month proposed a budget that would reduce K-12 education spending by $360 million this year and $4.4 billion next year.
The Kern High School District, whose operating budget this year is about $223 million, will see a loss of $23.6 million next year, Dennis Scott, associate superintendent for business, said at a special board meeting Monday.
"It is the steepest decline in funding in the shortest period of notice since we've seen since Prop. 13 of the early '80s," Scott said. Proposition 13, passed in 1978, capped property tax rates.
Several solutions are on the table including staff cuts if retirements and resignations do not make up the difference. Other money savers include cutting department and school budgets, drawing down reserves and program reductions.
Districts have until March 15 to tell teachers if there will be layoffs.
But KHSD has a silver lining that many districts do not. The district, while slowing down, is still growing. And that means more money from the state, which pays schools based on average daily attendance.
But for districts that are seeing fewer students, the pill is especially hard to swallow.
Di Giorgio and General Shafter school districts both have about 200 students and are slipping. Lomar Boatman, superintendent and principal at Di Giorgio, said he's hoping staff cuts won't have to be made, but the possibility can't be dismissed either.
Tom Cassida, director of business services for General Shafter, said the district knows it will be notifying staff of potential layoffs.
"We're hoping attrition will take care of our changes. ... If we have to name names, our seniority list is all accurate and up to date. We have to go last hired." Cassida has to shave $100,000 off a $1.6 million budget.
But at both districts' lone school there is just one class for each grade, so trimming teachers means bumping up class sizes. And General Shafter may also have to cut one of its three buses. Right now, all students ride the bus, Cassida said, but the district may make some walk.
Dean Bentley, superintendent of Beardsley School District, with 1,700 students, said he's been told to "anticipate the worst."
"If we anticipate the worst it could cut deeper than the attrition," Bentley said. "We may have to lay off probationary people."
This fiscal crisis could mean 15 percent cuts for Beardsley, which is also in declining enrollment. But Bentley said programs, while possibly consolidated, will not be cut completely.
The state's budget may not be set in stone until late summer or early fall, well past the deadline for schools to approve their own budgets by the end of June.