Loan Cancels Antelope Valley Schools’ Layoffs : Budget: The county’s action eliminates the need to immediately terminate employees. But all workers will eventually be asked to take a 7% pay cut.

Antelope Valley Union High School District officials, trying to cope with an unexpected $4.6-million budget deficit, said Wednesday they have eliminated the need for immediate layoffs by getting a loan from the county, but will ask all employees to take a 7% pay cut in the next school year to avoid layoffs then.

The Antelope Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees, surprising onlookers who had expected that 55 non-teaching employees would be laid off immediately, announced they had reached a deal with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which last month put the district under county supervision and ordered it to balance its budget by June 30.

The district, which has six schools and serves nearly 13,000 students, was surprised to discover last month that instead of the surplus that administrators thought they had, the district was actually deep in debt.

Many in the crowd of nearly 500 employees and students who attended the board’s meeting Wednesday night bitterly demanded the resignation of district administrators, despite the cancellation of the expected dismissals.

“The board is taking this action because of its understanding of the serious impact layoffs will have on the lives of employees of the district,” said board President Sophia Waugh.

District officials said they hammered out the deal during a closed-door meeting--lasting several hours--with top county education officials at the district’s Lancaster headquarters. The key provisions include:

* The district will not carry out the immediate layoffs of any of the 55 non-teaching employees who had been slated to be cut this school year.

* District officials will seek at least a 7% pay cut for all district employees effective at the start of the next fiscal year in July, as well as cuts in health and other benefits.

* And county officials have promised to loan the district enough money to end the current fiscal year in June with a balanced budget. At present, that would take about $4 million, but the amount could change in the coming months.

The proposed salary and benefit cuts are subject to bargaining with the district’s employee unions. But if such agreements are not reached in the coming months, district officials warned, they would proceed with layoffs in the next school year.

The proposal drew an angry reaction from at least one union leader. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t cause the financial problems of this district,” said teacher Dave Kennedy, president of the Antelope Valley Federation of Teachers.

To loud applause, Kennedy called for the resignation of the district’s top administrators. “No employee you would talk to in this district has any confidence in our current district administrators,” Kennedy told the board.

Under a new state law intended to safeguard financially ailing school districts, the Antelope Valley district last month became the first in the state to have a county monitor assigned to oversee its finances.

The move came after district officials announced they were facing a $4.6-million budget deficit this year, which is nearly 10% of their budget. They have blamed the shortfall on mistakes by former district finance officials and the district’s auditing firm.