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Battling the beast of budget

It's no secret that tough economic times are a-comin' (in some places, they're already here). This article came to us by way of the Associated Press and highlights just how those economic woes might affect school districts nationwide. With times tight all over the place, already-strapped school districts are looking at ways to tighten belts without cutting vital programs. In California, for instance, where a $4 billion cut has been proposed, tensions are high.

"It would decimate education as it exists right now," said Paul Chatman, a school board member from Ocean View, Calif. Chatman said some of the district's new teachers, who aren't protected by seniority rules, will lose their jobs, even if the governor's cuts are scaled back as expected. "It's unavoidable," he said glumly. "Those are going to be the ones that are going to have to go." Other desirable school programs are on the chopping block as well. Chatman said efforts to reduce class sizes will probably be slashed. A block scheduling program, in which students study subjects for longer periods, may be scrapped altogether because it relies on extra teachers to make it work.

And it's not just cuts, either.

A projected shortfall in Minnesota's budget also has education officials there worried, said Jackie Magnuson, a school board member from the Minneapolis suburb of Rosemount. She said school districts around the state would likely try to persuade voters to approve increased taxes for school funding, but she said those kind of ballot initiatives wouldn't pass easily. "They're not going to be in any real particular hurry to run and help support the schools and pay for increased taxes for you, even if they'd like to, because they're already up to their eyeballs (in bills)," she said.

Operating costs, salaries and benefits, and rising energy prices are making it harder and harder for school districts to make ends meet.

Laura Hall, a school board member from Marion, Va., said the increasing cost of operating schools means level funding or slightly increased funding amounts to a cut. She said she thinks her small school district in the mountains of southern Virginia will be able to pass a budget this year without drastic cuts. But she said she worries about what will happen if the economic trends continue. "In the back of my heart, I'm really nervous about what comes next," she said. "We haven't seen the bottom yet."

Chatman, president of the California School Boards Association, Magnuson, president of Minnesota School Boards Association; and Hall, president of Virginia School Boards Association attended NSBA's FRN Conference in Washington, D.C. last week, which aimed getting members of Congress to increase education funding and reauthorize NCLB prior to the Presidential election.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on February 12, 2008 (boomark / email).