POWAY -- Bus drivers, maintenance workers and other members of the Poway Service Employees International Union have rejected voluntary pay cuts to help the Poway Unified School District balance its budget.

About 160 members of the union, which represents more than 400 workers in the school district, voted against a proposal to reduce their salaries by 2.7 percent. Unions representing teachers and other district workers earlier this year agreed to similar salary reductions.

Melinda Battenberg, spokesperson for the Service Employees International Union, said 93 percent of voting members rejected the salary rollback last Friday.

"There was no guarantee from the district that there would not be more layoffs," she said. The union's bargaining team had recommended against the proposal because of the same reason.

District Human Resources Director Greg Franzen agreed that salary reductions would not have guaranteed service workers would be safe from layoffs.

Earlier this year, teachers represented by the Poway Federation of Teachers voted 1,038 to 459 in favor of reducing their salaries by 2.7 percent.

Karen Wusthoff, a Poway Federation of Teachers director, said at the time of the vote that teachers supported the salary cutbacks as a way of saving jobs. The district was considering laying off 245 full-time teaching positions, but instead sent layoff notices to 98 teachers because of the salary reductions, she said.

The 200-member Poway Association of Managers Union and the 1,200-member California School Employees Association also voted to reduce their salaries by 2.7 percent.

Battenberg said service employees were the last to vote on the salary reductions because they were left out of the loop during talks. While other unions voted in April, the service workers union voted last Friday because they needed time to consider the proposal.

"We were the last to know about this plan," she said. "The district was very delayed in telling the bargaining unit about it. They talked to other bargaining units way before they talked to us. They talked to us as an after-thought."

Franzen described the timing as more the result of miscommunication than a deliberate slight.

"I was being asked by my boss, who handles personnel, 'What's (the employee services union) going to do?'" Franzen said. "And I said they hadn't said anything yet."

Franzen said he later learned the union's bargaining unit was waiting to hear specifics on the proposal from the superintendent, while the district was waiting to hear a response from the union. The misunderstanding caused the delay, he said.

The Poway district's budget is about $250 million this fiscal year. It had an operating budget of about $261.3 million last year, and in 2006-07, the district's budget was $265.2 million.

Call staff writer Gary Warth at 760-740-5410.