L.A. Unified Approves $17 Million in Cuts

Budget-cutting season officially began at the Los Angeles Unified School District Tuesday, as the Board of Education voted to slash $17 million in administrative spending from local district and central offices in the middle of the year.

Faced with a state financial crisis, the school district must still cut an additional $61 million during the current school year to meet its $6-billion general revenues budget, officials said. More votes are expected over the next few weeks.

Board members rejected several other proposals that would have targeted spending at campuses, such as reducing instructional materials. They complained that Supt. Roy Romer and Chief Financial Officer Joe Zeronian had not provided enough information on how the reductions would affect classrooms.

Board member Marlene Canter said it was “unacceptable” to quickly cut programs she had supported in the past. She and trustee Mike Lansing sent a memo to Romer earlier this week, asking him to review the effectiveness of the 11 mini-district offices that divide the sprawling system into administrative units.

Tuesday’s votes reduced such office expenses as leases and supplies and dropped award money for high-achieving schools, but did not call for any layoffs this school year.

Board member Genethia Hudley Hayes worried that, without more guidance, “we’re liable to do something that destroys everything we’ve been working for.”

Trustee Jose Huizar agreed, saying, “We don’t have an understanding of where the dollars are coming from and where the dollars are going.”

Lansing said he doubted whether the state would cut the education budget as deeply as Zeronian believed and urged his colleagues to take a cautious approach.

Several trustees asked Romer to analyze the effects of the proposed cuts and return his findings to the board.

Romer said he would return later this month with that information but said he worried the trustees were undermining his authority to shape the budget, and warned them not to give in to requests for more money from individual department heads.

Earlier in the day the board considered how it would handle next year’s estimated $421-million budget shortfall, but took no vote on the matter.

Among the most challenging issues are health insurance costs. Zeronian estimated they would rise by more than $80 million by next year. Those benefits are a central issue for the school district’s powerful teachers union.

On another matter, the board voted 5 to 2 to reject Huizar’s proposal to conduct further geological studies of the Belmont Learning Complex site to determine whether a fault running under the property is active.

Construction on the downtown high school was originally halted because of revelations of underground methane gases and other toxins at the site. Plans to resume construction were then stopped by news that an earthquake fault runs under two unfinished buildings.

Romer recently recommended a plan that would build an entirely new campus on a safer portion of the property and sell off the existing buildings or use them for another purpose.