To keep spending
under tight control and pay back a portion of the system's $58 million
accumulated deficit, Baltimore school officials said Tuesday that they plan
to cut 250 teaching jobs and raise class sizes next year.
"Our financial difficulties are not over,"
said Chief Executive Officer Bonnie Copeland, but added that the system is
gaining momentum in its efforts to reduce spending.
School officials presented a first look at
a proposed $964 million budget for fiscal year 2005 Tuesday night at a
public hearing. It would require the system to add two students to each
classroom, raising class sizes to 22 children in first grade and gradually
increasing to 32 students in high school.
The class-size increase would have been
greater without the increase in state aid under the Thornton funding plan,
Copeland said.
The reduction in the number of teachers
would be expected to come through attrition because it is not unusual for as
many as 250 teachers to leave a system with 8,000 teachers and teacher
aides. But if not enough teachers retire or leave this summer, layoffs would
be necessary.
The budget -- for the year be ginning July
1 -- was expected to be an important step for a system that was near
insolvency last month before it was bailed out by Mayor Martin O'Malley and
the City Council. The city lent the system $42 million, and the nonprofit
Abell Foundation agreed to add an $8 million loan to ease the cash-flow
problem.
Under the spending plan, which must be
approved by the school board and City Council, the system would reduce the
deficit by $35 million next year and create a $10 million fund for
contingencies that could arise. The budget is due to go to the City Council
by May 1.
Copeland said the system will have to pay
back $34 million of the loans. She acknowledged that the cash-flow issue
would remain a challenge to the system in the coming year.
The budget was presented as a nine-page
document, with one page that detailed spending.
At the public hearing, American Civil
Liberties Union education director Bebe Verdery noted the lack of detail.
While the public can see the bottom line, Verdery said, she wants to know
"what are the cuts the system is having to make to get to that point."
For instance, she noted that the system had
been planning to put 28 additional music, art or physical education teachers
in schools, but there is no way of knowing what happened to those positions.
Board member Sam Stringfield also made it
clear that the document presented Tuesday night was not enough. "We are
going to have to see a lot more detail," he said.
In previous years, the budget has been
inches thick and presented more information about how money would be spent.
Stringfield also suggested that while it
was important to keep the number of administrative staff at a minimum, as
Copeland pledged to do, the system needed a fully staffed finance office.
Too few staff overseeing finances was one of the factors that led to the
financial crisis this year.
The system projects that enrollment will
continue to decline -- by about 2,500 students -- to 89,275 next fall.
Two school board members expressed concerns
that the system make better projections this year. "The enrollment is so
critical to our success relative to staying in line fiscally," said board
member Brian Morris.
Overestimating student enrollment last year
meant that the system hired too many teachers.
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