Anton Unveils List of Potential Budget Cuts for L.A. Schools : Finances: His proposals to close $341-million gap include a one-year, 7% pay reduction for all employees, increased class sizes, less use of substitute teachers.

Facing the need to cut school spending by $341 million in the coming year, Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Bill Anton unveiled a “shopping list” of almost $630 million in potential reductions Monday, including a proposal that all 59,000 district employees take a one-year, 7% pay cut.

Acknowledging that the recommendations will come under fire from teachers, parents and others, Anton said the cuts will “will have a devastating effect on our employees, on our students, on our educational program.”

But, he said, unless local officials can pry more money out of Sacramento, the 625,000-student district faces its leanest year ever and the reality of “catastrophic cuts” as the district operating budget is slashed by almost 10%.

School board members must select more than $329 million in reductions from Anton’s lists in time for the district to develop a balanced budget by its June 30 deadline. Anton has already cut more than $10 million by reorganizing district offices and eliminating 155 administrative positions.

His new proposals include several that would directly affect schools by increasing class size by three students in fourth through 12th grades, curtailing the use of substitute teachers, eliminating high school counselors, cutting police patrols of junior and senior high school campuses, reducing the amount spent on instructional materials, abolishing high school athletic programs and cutting after-school playground programs.

Some suggestions--such as ending high school athletics and disbanding the district’s school police force--are ranked as “low priority” by Anton, meaning they should be considered only as a last resort because of their potential negative impact on schools.

But other recommendations--such as the mandatory pay cut, an unpaid furlough of up to five days for all employees, an additional class session of teaching per day for senior high teachers and the loss of “pupil free” paid days between semesters were called high priority.

The 7% pay cut--projected to save almost $140 million--would be effective for one year, then restored to employees’ salary base and given to employees who remain with the district the following year as a bonus.

Anton and two of his top administrators have already announced plans to cut their salaries by 10% to save money, and the option of cutting salaries districtwide as an alternative to employee layoffs has been considered by the board before. But teachers union President Helen Bernstein said her membership will not take a pay cut and she denounced Anton’s package for putting too much of the financial burden on teachers.

In fact, Anton’s proposal sets the district squarely on a collision course with the teachers union, just as the two sides prepare to begin negotiating a new contract. The current contract expires June 30, but Bernstein has said teachers may continue working into the summer since negotiations will not begin until the district budget is finalized.

In addition to cutting their pay and eliminating thousands of teaching positions, provisions of Anton’s budget package would drastically increase the workload of teachers, requiring them to perform hallway and playground supervision and pick up the slack left by cutbacks in other support services.

“It’s a disaster for the teachers and it’s a disaster for the kids,” Bernstein said. “He targeted every single gain we made in the last contract.”

In 1989, the teachers went on strike for nine days to win a contract that delivered hefty 8% annual raises and a share of the power in running their schools. Bernstein questioned the legality of some of Anton’s recommendations, since they are prohibited by the teachers’ current contract. But school finance chief Robert Booker said the district can impose new working conditions in the next fiscal year--beginning July 1--because the teachers’ contract expires one day earlier.