Schools

School District Could Lay Off 87 Teachers

Updated budget plan would eliminate 167 jobs, and more cuts might have to be considered

Eighty-seven teachers and guidance counselors would be laid off in the latest Bethlehem Area Schools budget plan unveiled tonight, and more cuts would be needed still to hit the school board’s stated goal of keeping the tax increase to 1.7 percent.

There would be a total of 167 job cuts in all under the latest iteration of the district’s 2011-12 spending plan, an 8 percent workforce reduction that is far more Draconian than anything district administrators imagined when the budget discussions began back in January.

Yet, Superintendent Joseph J. Roy said, there still remains a $2.4 million budget hole that must be filled unless the board agrees to a tax increase of 3.64 percent. Three of nine board members expressed a willingness to do that.

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“This was extremely painful and emotional,” Roy told the board. “It’s going to be even more painful and more impactful to beyond this. We’ll try to be creative.”

The cuts, if implemented as laid out, would be felt across a wide array of programs throughout the district. Full-day Kindergarten would be eliminated in favor of half-days. Middle School curriculum would be reorganized. High school electives would be slashed to favor only the most popular courses and seniors would be given the option to take one less class per day.

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The SPARK early childhood education program would also be tossed, though that had already been discussed at prior school board budget sessions.

There would be other reductions as well. One high school athletic director’s job would be eliminated, meaning one person would manage sports programs at both Liberty and Freedom high schools. Twelve high school coaching jobs would also be eliminated.

The district would eliminate 13 of 16 family development specialists, counselors who work with at risk-students and struggling families.

While the administration anticipated steep cuts to the state’s education budget, it did not anticipate all of the cuts laid out in Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget. The 20-percent reduction in Pennsylvania funding to the Bethlehem Area School District is the largest percentage cut in the Lehigh Valley, Roy said.

Despite the large number of cuts, Roy said the administration worked hard to preserve the district’s core academic functions. The layoffs and staff reductions would not affect class size in core academic classes, he said.

After the meeting, Jolene Vitalos, president of the Bethlehem Education Association – the teachers union, noted that the plan presented by Roy and the administration lacked “shared sacrifice” in that only one administrative position had been cut, the SPARK principal.

Nonetheless, she said she would continue to sit down with Roy to look for different ways to cut costs.

 “It would be irresponsible to totally balance the district’s budget solely on the backs of the teachers and the professionals of the Bethlehem Area School District,” she said. “There was no shared sacrifice presented here tonight.”

Vitalos also noted that the district finished the 2010 school year with a fund balance of $9 million and has built an additional $2 million into the budget currently being considered.

“That fund balance could end up at twelve, thirteen, fourteen million dollars and they don’t want to touch it,” she said.

Board members William Burkhardt and Aurea Ortiz also noted the fund balance during the meeting and spoke of their willingness to spend more of that to preserve more programming. Other board members did not agree.

Board President Michelle Cann said the fund balance is important to the district’s credit rating, which affects the amount of interest the district pays on its more than $200 million of long-term debt.

“If your fund balance is too low, taxpayers will be paying for that for decades to come,” Cann said.


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