Antelope Valley District Faces 10% Layoff, 7% Pay Cut

The Antelope Valley Union High School District will lay off more than 100 employees--about 10% of its work force--cut all salaries by 7% and slash spending on a wide range of school programs in an effort to erase a projected $12-million deficit, district officials said Wednesday.

None of the district’s six schools will be closed. But the cutbacks starting with the new school year will mean larger class sizes and reductions in home-to-school busing, security staffing and money for athletic and extracurricular programs for the district’s 11,500 students.

The layoffs and cutbacks amount to an unprecedented bloodletting for the high school district, which had to cut the equivalent of one fourth of its $47-million annual budget. However, officials have conceded the shortfall is largely due to the district’s own mistakes and miscalculations.

The Board of Trustees voted 3 to 0 on Wednesday night to set the cutbacks in motion by adopting a recovery plan offered by administrators that is designed to rescue the district from its current state as the most financially troubled school district in Los Angeles County.

District Supt. Kenneth Brummel said the cutback package now goes to county education officials who must review and approve it or suggest changes to the district.

The funding problem is so serious that district officials said they would have been unable to meet the payroll for the remainder of this school year had not county education officials, in an unprecedented move locally, arranged a $12-million loan for the district from the county treasury.

Among the positions slated for elimination effective July 1 will be 37 temporary teachers, three vice principals, about five district administrators, and a long list of custodians, clerks, groundskeepers, cafeteria workers and all 10 locker attendants.

In addition, the district plans to eliminate after-hours security at schools to save $400,000, eliminate behind-the-wheel driver training for students to save $100,000, cut the general funding given to principals by 18% to save $300,000, and begin charging for bus trips to games and activities.

The planned layoffs and program cuts presented to the school board Wednesday account for about $8 million in savings. District officials plan to save another $3 million with an across-the-board 7% pay cut for all remaining employees, including top administrators.

However, officials conceded, even after all the planned cuts, they still must find another $1 million in savings.

The projected deficit consists of an estimated $6.1-million shortfall for the fiscal year ending in June, plus a similar amount expected in the coming school year. County officials called those numbers a worst-case scenario.

District officials first disclosed the deficit in January, at first estimating this year’s shortfall at less than $1 million. But after county education officials became involved and began unscrambling the district’s finances, the amount ballooned.

Brummel and school board members had said they were unaware of the problems until an audit late last year uncovered indications that the district’s finances were not as healthy as they had thought. Subsequently, district officials placed the blame on mistakes by two former district business officials and the district’s prior auditor.

However, a memo recently surfaced from one of those officials--former Assistant Supt. of Business Services Darlene Hinkel, who left earlier this year--in which she warned Brummel of a potential $9-million deficit in April, 1991, nine months prior to the conclusion of the audit.

The district’s position also became more complicated last month when the school board--over the objections of county education officials--rescinded warnings to more than 400 permanent teachers that their jobs might be eliminated in the coming school year. As a result, under state law, the district must now employ all of those teachers this fall.

County officials had demanded that the district keep the warnings in effect to maintain the option of some teacher layoffs if they became necessary.

And later in April, the county rejected the district’s original recovery plan as inadequate, demanding a new one be submitted by today.