ORANGE : Board Must Weigh School Budget Cuts

Board of Education members listened with grim faces as an administrator ran down the shopping list of painful cuts the Orange Unified School District must consider to resolve long- and short-term budget problems.

The only decision made at the Thursday night budget study session was to have Chief Fiscal Officer Joyce Capelle form a committee of parents and staff to consider elementary school closures and boundary changes. Board members also came to a tentative consensus that class size will not increase beyond the current average of 30.

The board has less than three weeks to make up a $1.7-million shortfall in the $100-million budget before the July 1 deadline. The district also needs to boost the depleted reserve by $400,000 to bring it up to the state recommended level of 3% of the budget.

Capelle urged the board to consider closing some of the smaller of the 26 elementary schools in the district because the state reduces funds to schools with fewer than 600 students.

The average elementary population in the district is 450 and Capelle warned them that “we have too many too small schools.”

A surge in growth in the west side of town is straining those schools to capacity, she said, which makes the drain of keeping small neighborhood schools open more apparent.

Each school closed would save the district about $250,000 per year, she said.

“It’s a painful decision, and there are a lot of ways to approach it, but this is one possible way to address the long-term problem and a necessary one in my opinion,” Capelle told the board.

Another likely candidate for immediate and long-term cuts is transportation services, Capelle said.

The board can increase the walking distance for students, eliminate transportation for secondary schools or increase the fees for parents, which now range from $60 to $180 per year. Savings would be about $185,000, she said.

Capelle also brought up cutting the “co-curricular” or sports programs, although she noted, “I risk my life by suggesting this.”

Other school districts have cut back the funding for these programs while simultaneously building funds through grants and donations, she said.

The district currently spends $1 million per year in this popular area.

Other proposals include reductions in support staff, employee benefits and pay raises, a hiring freeze and a consolidation of management, Capelle said, noting that many of these items are subject to negotiation with the unions.

Board members were largely quiet as they absorbed the news, but Bill Lewis urged members to put class size increases at the bottom of the list, and Robert Viviano said he wanted to keep the cuts out of the classroom if at all possible.

“Adopting a budget on or before July 1 is not an academic exercise but neither is it chiseled in stone,” Capelle told them. Changes may come with revisions in the state budget and negotiations, she said.

Board President Maureen Aschoff said she expects some “avid discussion” about the budget at the June 23 board meeting. “We do know how concerned the community is about this,” she said Friday.