District Cuts of $2.5 Million Spare Classroom

Faced with an almost certain shortfall in state funding, the Glendale Board of Education Tuesday adopted a $105-million budget that slashes $2.5 million from the district’s administrative and support services but preserves all existing instructional programs.

By drawing on reserve funds that were built up in the last decade, the Glendale Unified School District was able to avoid the massive program cutbacks anticipated in other districts around the state.

Schools officials said the reductions here will have a minimal impact on classroom education.

“The students won’t notice it,” said June Sweetnam, vice president of the board, although she noted that for next year, with the reserves gone, “the outlook is pretty grim.”

This year, no teachers, counselors, librarians or nurses will be laid off, average class size will remain the same and classroom supplies will not be reduced.

A highly praised dropout prevention program that was threatened with elimination will also be preserved.

“We are in better shape for ‘91-92 than many districts,” said district spokesman Vic Pallos.”The object was to keep the reductions as far away from the classroom as possible--to cut away behind the scenes.”

The district will cut back on staff training, new audiovisual and communications equipment, long-range planning and clerical and maintenance services.

The travel budget and magazine subscriptions for administrators will also be reduced.

Nine clerical and maintenance jobs are being eliminated through attrition, Pallos said. A district administrator who is retiring will not be replaced and his responsibilities will be divided among other administrators. However, all teaching vacancies will be filled.

The budget planning process was complicated by the long debate in Sacramento on how much money the state should spend on education when facing a massive deficit.

However, under the budget adopted by the Legislature and now awaiting Gov. Pete Wilson’s signature, school districts will not receive any cost-of-living increase to compensate for inflation or to pay for rising health costs and automatic salary increases. Instead, they will have to reduce spending in other areas to pay these increased costs.

Pallos and Glendale district analyst Julie Boucher said the Glendale district was able to make its cuts relatively easily this year because of its recent fiscal conservatism.

The district’s student population has grown substantially in the last decade, resulting in regular increases in state funding for school programs, Boucher said. Instead of spending that money each year on new programs, the district put much of it into reserve, Pallos said.

“We have been growing steadily, and we have built up extra money,” he said.

This year educators will draw on those reserves--as they did last year--to cushion the district from the effects of the state shortfall.

But district officials warned that if California’s fiscal crisis continues, they too could be forced to cut at the heart of their educational program.

Next year, reserves will be down to the minimum level allowed by state law--3% of the total operating budget--and the district will be prohibited from drawing on those funds without special state permission, Boucher said.

Unless the district receives some increases in state funding to compensate for inflation, it will have no alternative but to make more serious cuts, officials said.

“We are not out of the woods,” Pallos said. “Next year’s cuts will not be as easily made because there is not much left to look at except the instructional programs.”