Think First of the Students

How much worse can it get?

The Los Angeles Unified School District has cut $275 million from its budget this year to compensate for reductions in state funding. Despite that, even deeper cuts are needed.

The district has asked all employees to take a 3% slice. The cutback would save about $72 million and is supposed to be repaid to the employees with interest next year from state funds. Repaying this non-voluntary loan would cost $150 million.

Nobody likes a pay cut, but the sacrifices are inevitable to keep the district solvent in the face of worsening financial news from Sacramento.

The state cut spending on education to compensate for a budget shortfall. It then cut a second time to compensate for a deficit made deeper by the recession. The new reductions leave the Los Angeles school district with one reasonable choice: The school board should approve the pay cut on Monday, and hope for better news from Sacramento down the road.

Highly paid district administrators and principals agreed to a pay cut and unpaid furloughs--a total cut of about 6.5% and a savings of about $8 million. In future negotiations, administrative salaries must be brought more in line with teacher salaries. It’s one thing to take a small percentage cut if as an administrator you make $70,000; it’s quite another if you make $40,000 as a teacher.

Teachers understandably wish to protect generous raises so recently won after decades of poor pay. The teachers deserve more pay, but Sacramento’s cost-of-living adjustments just haven’t covered it. In past years, the board made up the difference. To do so today, however, would require additional layoffs, deeper program reductions and greater sacrifices by the schoolchildren, who already attend crowded and understaffed schools.

Every district employee, including teachers, must sacrifice to buy time for the schools. The pay cuts are a necessary and, we hope, temporary evil.