The Fayette Citizen-News Page

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

$145 M budget freeze squeezes schools

By J. FRANK LYNCH
jflynch@theCitizenNews.com

Fayette County school board members will get their first look at a 2003-2004 operations budget that is very much "a work in progress" when they convene in a special called meeting Thursday afternoon.

The 4:30 p.m. workshop, in School Board chambers at the central administration offices on Stonewall Avenue, is open to the public and will provide a glimpse at the rough early draft of an expected $145 million spending plan, about the same as the 2002-03 budget.

The funding freeze comes as local schools continue to grow. Fayette will likely enroll another 400 to 500 students, topping the 21,000 mark for the first time next fall. But it won't be getting the additional 70 to 80 new teachers that come with that growth in healthier times.

2 new schools open

Crabapple Lane Elementary will open in Peachtree City, and Whitewater High is set to welcome its freshman class at the LaFayette Educational Center in Fayetteville.

So two new schools will open in August with practically no increase in new personnel systemwide.

Some elementary school classrooms will go without paraprofessionals, a luxury that's now considered sacred by some Fayette parents. And 20 brand new buses on routes next fall won't be owned by the school district they will be leased, saving $1 million.

And that ... may be the worst of it.

Cuts in fine arts? Isn't going to happen, Superintendent John DeCotis assures. Ditto for special instructional programs and valued offerings like Advanced Placement foreign languages.

However, forgive the school system, he asks, if your child's classroom didn't get a summer paint job. Or if that water fountain is slightly screwy. Or if the grass out on the playground is a bit worn.

Tough times call for smart choices, he says.

A yearlong job

It has been the job of Fayette Schools Comptroller Jim Stephens, a five-year veteran of the local budget process, to come up with so many ingenious ways NOT to spend money.

Of course, when there is no money to spend, it only makes things more difficult. While property tax revenues, the primary source of local school funding, are flat, it's really the statewide budget crisis that hurts most.

Of the Fayette school system's 3,000 employees, more than 500 of them many professionals like aides, librarians, special education teachers are paid salaries that come completely from local sources.

Those positions don't exist in other school districts, Superintendent John DeCotis is proud to point out. But he can't promise how long Fayette will be able to maintain that edge, either.

That's why he's lobbying hard for lawmakers to loosen the tight grip former Gov. Roy Barnes had on local school spending, especially when connected to student-teacher ratios, a key component of Barnes' now-maligned education reform efforts of four years ago.

Next school year was supposed to be the last of a gradual phase in of lower teacher-student ratios across the state, DeCotis said. State education officials have required smaller classroom sizes each of the last three years. And each of those years, Fayette County did one better lowering the ratio even more and paying the difference.

And that difference is what's breaking the local school budget.

In a letter to Rep. Bob Holmes of Tucker, chairman of the House Education Committee, DeCotis pointed out the challenges of not allowing flexibility in enforcing policy it's not enough that a classroom have "around" 18 students per teacher. It can have no more, period. And if a new student moves in and pushes that total to 19, the school must establish a full new classroom and hire to fill a full teaching position.

It's that risk DeCotis is afraid to take, that every couple of months or immediately after the holiday break in new classroom teachers will have to be hired to keep ratios down.

"We locally fund 366 teachers and paraprofessionals," DeCotis wrote to Howard. "Many of these positions will have to be eliminated."

Fayette not alone

Even state School Superintendent Kathy Cox, a former classroom teacher in Fayette County, is fighting to reverse the hard-line demands of Barnes' policies, firing off letters to superintendents statewide to gain support for bills that returned spending decisions involving state funds to the local level.

But like so much this legislative season, those initiatives have been swallowed up by the much bigger state budget fight.

This week, as the legislative term dragged on and on with still no budget, Stephens said he did get assurance from the local legislative delegation that expected expenditures through the end of this year.

But there is no way of telling how much money Fayette will get from the state starting in 2004, he said.

"We're developing a budget that includes all the things we consider to be realistic to include, and from there when we get the final money from the state we may have to do a lot of cutting," Stephens said. "Or maybe we won't."

And time is running out. School board members will spend the next four to six weeks reviewing the plan as it is firmed up, and law dictates that it must be adopted by June 30 and activated by July 1.