School Board Delays Raises, Orders Leaves

Employees of the Los Angeles Unified School District took heavy economic hits Monday as the school board began its final steps toward closing a $241-million budget gap by eliminating some automatic raises and forcing teachers and others to take short, unpaid leaves.

In what was to have been its final day of budget deliberations, the board voted to save $18.9 million by putting a one-year hold on the annual salary increases granted to employees with less than 10 years experience, and to save $44.7 million by ordering all 58,000 employees to take from two to five days off without pay next year.

The board postponed until Wednesday decisions on two of its most hotly debated cost-cutting measures--an-across-the-board pay cut for all employees, and a package that would reduce administrative costs.

Supt. Bill Anton had initially proposed a one-year pay cut of 7%, but reduced that recommendation to 3%.

Anton projected that the $50.8 million saved with a pay cut of about 2.2% may be all that is necessary. His suggested administrative cuts amount to an additional $25.5 million, leaving the district more than $30 million short of its target.

The board already has approved more than $100 million in cuts, including several that will reach into the classrooms.

High school classes will have three more students in the coming year, as the district saves $21.3 million by increasing class sizes in grades nine through 12. Schools will get less money to buy supplies, saving the district $4.3 million. Fewer substitute teachers will be hired for high school classes, a savings of $10 million. More than $20 million will be saved by a variety of changes in school staffing formulas that will eliminate hundreds of teaching and administrative positions.

The school board needs to cut $241 million, or more than 5% of its $4-billion 1991-92 budget. This will be the second year of heavy cuts in the nation’s second-largest district, which has seen its financial base shrink as the state’s financial problems worsen.

Many cuts the board has approved must still be negotiated with employee unions, including the pay cuts, furloughs, elimination of an employee counseling service that costs the district $600,000, and unspecified changes in employee health coverage expected to save the district $8.5 million. Most employee contracts expire this month.

The unpaid furloughs and elimination of salary step increases will reduce most employee salaries by about 5% to 7%.

The board has rejected several other money-saving measures that would have caused large teacher layoffs and increased the workload of instructors. District and union negotiators have been working together to make the health benefit cuts, but union officials have pledged not to let the cuts fall unfairly on their members.

Monday’s deliberations stalled when board members could not agree on the magnitude of cuts to be made to the district’s administrative offices.

Anton has already cut about $16 million from central offices with a restructuring that eliminates more than 150 positions. The package of proposed administrative cuts Anton gave the board Monday includes $17 million from downtown offices and almost $6 million in school support services, but some board members argue that that is not enough.

To the extent that cuts can be made in pay and administrative offices, school officials say that classrooms can be spared from further cuts.

“It’s an issue of deciding relative to other cuts, what’s going to be the lesser evil,” said board member Warren Furutani.

In its preliminary voting Monday, the board deadlocked on several measures, hamstrung by the absence of veteran board member Rita Walters, who resigned Friday to take a seat she won on the City Council.

The board has until June 30 to arrive at a balanced budget, and is expected to complete its cuts Wednesday.