Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!enterpoop.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.metro From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Teaching jobs get ax in D.C. school budget Date: Wed, 25 Nov 92 16:20:05 EST Message-ID: Lines: 92 \SE B;METROPOLITAN \HD Teaching jobs get ax in D.C. school budget \BY Darryl Lynette Figueroa \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES The D.C. school board's finance committee yesterday passed a $513.5 million budget request for 1994 that would cut 683 staff positions, including 430 teaching jobs, and slash school-based programs by $8.5 million. Officials said they will eliminate some positions by not filling existing or future vacancies created by attrition, but admitted some teachers will likely be laid off. The school administration maintains the cuts will not affect the system's student-teacher ratio, an assertion disputed by critics. Programs for dropout prevention, potential merit scholars and others will also be cut and merged with related programs under the plan approved yesterday. In addition, the plan calls for closing eight more city schools and includes no money for pay raises to principals or teachers, who only last week signed a contract for $15 million worth of increases. The proposed budget differs from a version presented Nov. 12 by cutting more administrators and taking less from classroom programs, in keeping with recommendations of recent school audits and frustrated parent groups. Of 461 central administrators, 100 will lose their jobs under the proposal, double the original number. Program cuts are almost $1 million less than the $9.6 million requested in the earlier outline. "It was extremely difficult," said committee chairwoman Karen Shook, an at-large member. "There are projects and programs that everybody likes. The problem is we're in a financial crisis here." Jim Ford, staff director of the D.C. Council Committee on Education and Libraries, who has been generally critical of the school system, said, "It looks like there's been a great deal of thought put into it. Some of it will be controversial, but that's not necessarily bad." But his optimism was not shared by Mary Levy, who analyzes school budgets for Parents United, a citywide parent advocacy group. "They've added some explanations, but I still don't understand. . . . I'm disappointed and distressed," she said. D.C. Schools Superintendent Franklin Smith will present the budget to the mayor and council next month and will include more clarifications than the document passed yesterday. The proposal's lack of explanations forced Mr. Smith to spend more than eight hours addressing all the questions asked by school board members during a closed session Monday. The omissions also led to fierce criticism last week from Parents United and individual parents at a public hearing. Many parents thought programs were being gutted and teacher-student ratios increased, while not enough administrative positions were being cut. The administration said yesterday many of the reduced programs will be merged with others, not killed, while the existing teacher-student ratio will not be changed. Dropout prevention, for example, will be merged with attendance and substance-abuse programs for a projected savings of $230,000. Conflict mediation will come under values education and should save the full amount currently budgeted to the program, $354,000. The potential merit scholars program will also lose its full budget of $105,100 but will survive under the gifted-and-talented division. "There's been a lot of duplication," Mrs. Shook said. "We've sometimes had three or four people running the same program in one school and the people didn't even talk to one another." Any layoffs would involve the Washington Teachers Union, which only last week signed a three-year deal that calls for an 11 percent raise over the last two years of the contract. "My responsibility is to be sure the superintendent and the board follow the seniority process: the last hired would be the first fired," union President Jimmie Jackson said. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM