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Hernando Today

All Options On Table For School Cuts

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By TONY MARRERO

Hernando Today

Published: February 14, 2009

BROOKSVILLE - All options are on the table to save millions in this year's school budget, even the most painful ones like staff and pay cuts, reductions to the magnet program budget and cutting transportation services for some students.

Superintendent Wayne Alexander has provided a list of suggestions for the school board to consider to deal with an estimated $25 million shortfall this year. A workshop on the budget is slated for 2 p.m. Tuesday.

If all the suggestions were approved, the district would save more than $31 million and lose 225 staff positions, mostly by attrition or eliminating vacant posts.

Some of the ideas are sure to be met with outcry, such as cutting transportation for magnet students (savings of more than $835,000) and for students who live within two miles of their schools (about $1.9 million in savings).

Another tactic would cut funding for the magnet-theme programs at six schools by more than $799,000.

Other suggestions would require negotiation with teacher and noninstructional employee unions, such as a 5 percent, across-the-board pay cut for savings of more than $5.1 million. The district just agreed to give teachers and noninstructional employees a raise.

Also on the list is a district-wide salary freeze that would save nearly $3.3 million.

Pay cuts and salary freezes could be approved without negotiation with the unions if the school board declares a financial emergency. That declaration can't come unless the board has exhausted all other options and depleted its reserves, Hernando Classroom Teachers Association President Joe Vitalo said Friday.

"We will not be in agreement (with pay cuts) because there are other options," Vitalo said.

The biggest savings on the list - about $7.3 million - would come from increasing class sizes by adjusting staff ratios through attrition. Kindergarten classes would go from 16 to 19 students; grades 1-3 from 17 to 19 students; grades 4-5 from 21 to 23; middle school from 22 to 25; and high school from 25 to 28.

That move, however, would move the district in the opposite direction as it works toward compliance with the constitutional amendment on class size passed by voters in 2002. Those standards have to be in place by the 2010-11 school year.

Another suggestion would trim the district's office staff by six, for a savings of nearly $369,000. Other ideas include cutting one media specialist at each of the county's four high schools and eliminating four driver education positions for a total savings of $456,000.

At the top of the three-page list of recommendations is the overall "goal," written in all capital letters, that Alexander said he used when coming up with suggestions: "To preserve positions and the sanctity of the classroom."

"Everything the teacher needs and the child needs for education to learn is sacred," Alexander said Friday. "But everything else has to be looked at."

He acknowledged that many of the ideas will be controversial.

"None of this is good and I don't want to do any of this, but for every idea that someone says, 'That's horrible, don't do that,' my response is, 'Then we'll need to do something else,'" to reduce the budget, Alexander said.

He pointed out that he and the board have made some $19.5 million in cuts in the last 18 months without cutting jobs.

"That is an incredible achievement," he said.

The Legislature is expected to finalize the state budget in the next month, giving school districts concrete numbers to work with when cutting budgets. The state's education commissioner has told superintendents to expect another 2 percent cut in March and perhaps a 15 percent cut for the next school year.

School board member Pat Fagan on Friday said Alexander certainly was comprehensive.

"I don't think he left anything out," he said. "It's going to be painful."

Board Chairwoman Dianne Bonfield said she didn't see any suggestions that shouldn't at least be discussed.

"I think everything that's on that list is something the board needs to talk about," Bonfield said.

Reporter Tony Marrero can be reached at 352-544-5286 or lmarrero@hernandotoday.com.

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