CARLSBAD: School district approves $5.6M in budget cuts

Trustees OK architect's plans for new high school

By STACY BRANDT - Staff Writer | Wednesday, May 14, 2008 10:39 PM PDT ∞

CARLSBAD ---- Carlsbad Unified School District trustees unanimously agreed Wednesday to cut as much as $5.6 million from what they were expecting to spend next year.

The cuts Superintendent John Roach recommended included eliminating various teaching, support and administrative positions, as well as reducing individual school budgets, reducing teachers' stipends and increasing some class sizes.

Before the vote, the trustees said they didn't want to make the cuts, but didn't feel they had much of a choice considering the deficit the district could be facing next year.

"I think all of us feel the same way," board President Elisa Williamson said before the vote. "The people who feel worse than we do are the people whose lives are being affected by this."

As part of Roach's recommendation, he asked district officials to hold off on sending layoff notices to some nonteaching employees until they get a better picture of how much money will be coming in from the state next year.

Some of the cuts may not be necessary depending on what happens over the next several months with next year's state budget, Roach said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released an updated proposal Wednesday for next year's budget that allotted more money to school districts than his January proposal. Still, the governor's recommended funding for schools next year could require the district to make some significant cuts, Roach said.

"I'm feeling a little bit better about our organization's ability to weather the storm," Roach said, after seeing the revised proposal.

Before the new proposal was released, Carlsbad officials were expecting to have to trim between $2.5 million and $6.2 million from the more than $80 million they planned to spend next year. Now, Roach says he thinks the amount will be less than $4.5 million. The budget for the 2008-09 school year was expected to be slightly higher than the $80 million the district expected to bring in this year.

Also at Wednesday's meeting, the board approved preliminary plans for the high school the district plans to build near College Boulevard and Cannon Road.

Several board members said they were impressed with the plans, which call for a three-story campus full of trees and native landscaping.

Student board member Jamie Brown said she was pleased with the plans.

"It looks like a really nice, happy place to go to school," she said at the meeting. "It almost makes me not want to graduate."

The $95.5 project is expected to be completed in 2011 and open that August.

The campus will be paid for with money from Proposition P, the $198 million bond measure voters passed in 2006.

Some of that money will also go toward rebuilding the existing Carlsbad High School campus.

The board voted Wednesday to pay McCarthy Building Companies more than $1 million to put up temporary classrooms that will be used while other portions of the campus are rebuilt. That work is expected to start this week and be done before the first day of school in August.

Contact staff writer Stacy Brandt at (760) 901-4009 or sbrandt@nctimes.com.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, email addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.