Poway Unified looks to trim $15.5M

By: SHAYNA CHABNER - Staff Writer | Monday, March 3, 2008 10:54 PM PST ∞

POWAY -- Faced with the prospect of having to cut as much as $15.5 million from its spending plan for the coming year, Poway school district officials said Monday that no department or program would be spared from the budget discussion.

In the first budget meeting Monday, district officials presented Poway Unified School District trustees with a list of possible measures to rein in spending. Among those discussed were increasing class sizes in grades four through 12, eliminating or reducing home-to-school busing, laying off as many as 150 teachers and rolling back raises.

"When you hit the kind of bottom line, what you realize is there is no way to do this without impacting individual people," Superintendent Don Phillips said. "The nature and the severity of this reduction is sizable and really unprecedented."

The district, like many others statewide, is wrestling with significant cuts to programs and staff following news that the state would reduce education funding for the next fiscal year, beginning July 1.

In January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger presented a proposal to cut about $4.4 billion in spending on education to relieve a deficit -- which the latest estimate by the nonpartisan legislative analyst has placed at $16 billion -- in the next fiscal year.

Under the governor's proposal, the 33,000-student district expects to have to trim more than $15.5 million from its current-year revenue of about $258.8 million. Expenditures for the year are slightly higher at $259.2 million, according to the latest figures released in December.

Malliga Tholandi, the district's director of finance, said that budget projections for the 2008-09 school year will not be available until the board's next meeting on March 10.

The cuts paint a bleak picture for the district, according to staff members. They come in the face of a steady increase in the cost of utilities, the opening of new schools and the district's responsibility to pay more for special education.

Included on the list of proposed reductions Monday night were cuts that could save the district slightly more than $11.8 million. Another $3.4 million in potential cuts were listed, including the elimination of school busing, but those savings were not quantified.

Phillips emphasized that the proposals were just some of the options being explored by staff, and that the list of more than three dozen cuts to learning support services, district operations, classrooms and schools could change.

One measure the district will not take to save money, staffers said, is increasing class sizes in grades one through three, because the savings would not warrant the necessary layoffs and the loss of individualized attention for young students.

In the other grades, specifically middle school and high school, class sizes could be increased by five or six students next year, officials said.

District staffers also said that they are trying to keep assistant principals on campuses as they are looking to shift more responsibilities ---- such as the development of individualized learning plans for special education students ---- to each campus.

"We are trying to be smart about where we make reductions and how we do that," Phillips said.

Next year's proposed budget reductions come on the heels of reduced education spending from 2002-05 that forced the district to tighten its belt by about $13.8 million.

Phillips said that the district still has not been able to rebuild programs and staffing that took a hit during the last round of cuts.

-- Contact staff writer Shayna Chabner at (760) 740-5416 or schabner@nctimes.com.