Is the district proposing to cut counselors and librarians and raise class sizes?
In 2011-12, the district brought back as many laid off counselors and teachers as possible. Of the 408 certificated employees who were pink-slipped, we rehired 368. The more teachers we have the smaller our class sizes. Reserves of $13.95 million were set aside to restore programs and $12 million of the reserve was used for this purpose. The remaining reserves were used to offset $2.5 million in mid-year state budget “trigger” reductions for 2011-12.
In addition, unlike the other districts, we have created new art and music programs, expanded existing art and music programs and worked to keep as many school libraries staffed and open as possible.
We have to submit a balanced budget to the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) by March 15. In a departure from previous years, SCOE is further requiring that we balance our budget without assumptions about negotiated employee contributions. We can only list expense reductions that can be made without any action other than Board of Education approval.
On January 12, we presented a list of reductions of the Board. It includes five furlough days next year for all unrepresented employees, the further down-sizing of Central Office staff, freezing step-and-column increases for all unrepresented employees and the reduction of Central Office operating costs. This is in addition to the over $5 million hit that the Central Office has taken over the past two years.
We also propose reducing contracts to outside vendors, and, in fact, eliminating many contracts altogether. Please note that we cannot eliminate contracts that we are mandated by law to uphold, such as SES tutoring and Special Education services. We are also reducing categorically funded contracts such as those paid for by Title 1 money, even though those savings won’t impact our General Fund deficit.
These moves are a start, but get us only a fraction of the savings needed to achieve a balanced budget.
To make up the rest, and given SCOE’s constraint that our budget includes no assumptions about negotiated employee contributions, we are forced to list cuts that will decimate programs, hurt instruction, hurt schools and directly impact kids. The list is terrible and includes the elimination of counselors and librarians and the raising of class sizes. Click here to see the full list of reductions. Please keep in mind that we have until June 30 to finalize our budget.
