PORT ANGELES — The final legislative cut is deep, but it isn’t as bad as Port Angeles School District officials feared it would be.
When the School Board meets Monday, it will discuss eliminating slightly more than 10 full time equivalent positions for teachers — 10.251 fulltime equivalents, or FTEs — and considering ways to shave more than $2.1 million from its proposed budget for the 2010-11 school year.
That’s compared to an earlier target of cutting about 15 teaching positions and slashing a total of $2.5 million from the budget.
“We’re not pleased with having to make this deep of cuts, but we’re pleased it’s not worse,” Jim Schwob, district director of business and operations, said Friday.
The district found itself $350,566 less in the hole than anticipated after legislators wrapped up their work to balance a budget with a projected $2.8 billion deficit.
“That’s a major drop” from the budget Gov. Chris Gregoire proposed in December, Schwob said.
“It’s less money they cut from us,” he said. “That put that money back in that budget,” dropping the district’s target for cuts to $2,142,757.
“In the final budget, we saved 4.375 teaching positions over the governor’s proposal,” Schwob said.
So the district now needs to cut both less money from its budget and fewer teaching positions from its staff of about 290 full-time teachers than it had anticipated.
On Monday, the School Board will review, and perhaps re-prioritize, a list of possible cuts presented to it by the district’s fiscal advisory committee April 12.
It will take no action at the work session at 6 p.m. at the Central Services Building, 216 E. Fourth St.
The board will vote on cuts at a meeting beginning at 7 p.m. April 26 in the Central Services Building.
Student-teacher ratio
The improved fiscal picture came into focus after the state Legislature decided not to change the student-teacher ratio in kindergarten through third grades, although it did change the ratio in fourth grades, Schwob said.
Originally, the ratio for kindergarten through fourth grades was 53.2 teachers per thousand students statewide.
Gregoire had proposed reducing the ratio to 49 teachers per thousand students for kindergarten through third grades, and to 46 teachers per thousand students for fourth grades.
The Legislature opted to keep the original 53.2 per thousand ratio for kindergarten through third grades, but reduce it to 47.43 per thousand for fourth grades.
Teaching positions
“For our district, that equates to 1.625 teaching positions,” said Schwob, explaining that some teaching positions are part-time.
Additional positions will be lost because of declining enrollment, a trend the district — and others throughout the North Olympic Peninsula — have seen for several years.
More than 8 full-time teaching positions — 8.626 FTEs — will be lost because of fewer students enrolling than last school year.
Elementary schools are expected to lose 2.345 teaching FTEs, Schwob said, while secondary schools would see a loss of 6.281 teaching FTEs.
Cutting those positions would save the district $690,080, the fiscal advisory committee said.
Another $200,000 would be saved through the superintendent’s consolidation of four positions into two that earn less pay that the original jobs, Schwob said.
Only some cuts
Only some of the potential cuts listed by the fiscal advisory committee will be put into effect.
If all the possibilities were used, cuts would total $3,827,361. That would be $1.6 million more than is needed.
And those potential cuts that are ranked at the bottom of the list — such as elimination of high school football — won’t be considered unless the School Board moves them up as higher priorities.
The ranked list of potential cuts is on the district Web site, www.portangelesschools.org.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
