Palm Beach to cut 745 education positions

From the Palm Beach Post

by Allison Ross and Jason Schultz

Palm Beach County School Board members got their first look tonight at next year's proposed budget, which would cut about $35.2 million, eliminate 745 positions and give all employees a one-day unpaid furlough.

Superintendent Bill Malone called the budget, which totals about $2.5 billion, significant "not for the heartache it caused, but for the heartache it avoided."

His initial proposed budget eliminated 766 positions, some of which were already vacant, but the budget advisory committee recommended restoring several positions, including six of eight school psychologist positions and all 14 school police officer positions that were slated to be cut.

Board Member Karen Brill said the district should restore all eight psychologist positions because it has a backlog of evaluations and tests .

" We are going to be endangering our students by not restoring those two positions," Brill said. Other board members also supported restoring the two psychologist positions.

Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke said the district plans to shut down for one day next year when students are not in class and give all employees a one-day unpaid furlough that day, which would save about $5 million.

Board Member Monroe Benaim suggested board members should cut their salaries by as much as 20 percent to "show solidarity" with other employees suffering under the cuts.

School Board Chairman Frank Barbieri said board members could agree to defer any part of their salary they wanted. But he said the school board salary was the only source of income for some board members and it wasn't fair to mandate a 20 percent cut in pay.

"It's like giving in church or in temple. You give what you can afford," Barbieri said.

Burke said the state was also penalizing the district $4.1 million for failure to meet class-size reduction mandates this year. Barbieri said he wanted to sue the state for not funding the reduction mandates when an amendment to the state constitution for class size limits was passed.

School board members also discussed eliminating mileage reimbursements for all employees such as principals.

"If they make twice as much as a teacher, they can probably afford to put gas in their tank," Barbieri said.

School Board Vice Chairwoman Debra Robinson said she wanted to restore some of the proposed $1.5 million cut to the supplements paid to employees for extracurricular activities like coaching sports and sponsoring clubs.

Robinson said many students participate in academics because they get to participate in sports. She also advocated for more money being allocated for field trips.

"I know we're in a budget crisis. I really want to scrounge up more money for field trips," Robinson said. "Not just restore. I want more money."

The school board will hold more public workshops before approving the final budget.

Budget Advisory Committee Chairman Ed Tancer said 2013's budget situation could be much worse because much of next year's deficit is being plugged with "one-time" money such as $36 million federal jobs grant that cannot be renewed in 2013.

Both he and Malone outlined plans and ideas on how to start squeezing the budget in future years.

"This not a one-year process," Malone said. "We're all expecting that the folks in Tallahassee will give us additional years of cuts, for the next two to three years at least. We need to prepare to execute further reductions."

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/schools/palm-beach-county-school-board-starts-work-on-1513016.html?cxtype=rss_schools