Board strives for no layoffs

Mike Swanson

The school board approved an interim budget Tuesday that includes

more than $2 million of the district’s reserve fund and a $700,000

endowment, which members hope will be enough to rescind every layoff

notice issued last month.

The interim budget, which would take effect only in the worst-case

budget scenario, doesn’t include several economic factors, such as

changes in teachers’ salaries and benefits.

It was organized by the recently formed Downsize Risk Committee,

consisting of the district superintendent and assistant

superintendents, one board member and the presidents of five school

organizations: the PTA; the California Schools Employment Assn; the

Laguna Beach Unified Faculty Assn.; SchoolPower; and the Athletic

Boosters.

The Tuesday board meeting was the first since preliminary layoff

notices were issued in early March in response to Gov. Gray Davis’

budget proposal.

The district’s budget still doesn’t measure up to what everyone

wants -- the equitable-case scenario that treats basic-aid districts

like all the others.

Dawn Mirone, president of the Laguna Beach Unified Faculty Assn.,

said that she and other teachers are willing to help solve the

district’s budget trouble, but they have their own financial

situations to think about.

“I would love to say, ‘I’d like to donate my salary to be able to

keep everything running,’” she said. “However, I would be forgetting

my husband, my five children, my house, my car payment. ... I’m not

willing to go there.”

The focus, Supt. Theresa Daem and board clerk El Hathaway said, is

to keep the budget at the bare minimum while keeping every employee.

“This gives us a substantial boost for maximizing the number of

teachers and other staff that we can retain until we get notice from

the governor,” Daem said.

The total financial boost highlighted in the budget erases the

district’s deficit of more than $4.5 million by using $2,466,852 of

its $6-million reserve fund, $700,000 from the Laguna Beach Education

Endowment and Capital Fund, and $1.5 million from elsewhere,

including $500,000 of class-size reduction revenue.

Because of state and bond restrictions, the amount of reserves

approved by the board was the maximum Asst. Supt. Norma Shelton said

they could approve.

If the worst-case scenario from Sacramento is taken off the table

in favor of the district’s proposed equitable-case scenario, then the

money would return to the reserve fund, she added.

“This is the perfect example of why there is a reserve,” Shelton

said.

The money coming from the Laguna Beach Education Endowment and

Capital Fund will function under the same provision.

Bob Earl, president of the endowment, said they’re offering

$700,000 just in case the district “isn’t quite there” when the

deadline to issue final layoff notices arrives on May 15.

Mirone expressed concern with the economic effect of the plan,

especially how it will influence teachers’ salaries and benefits and

class sizes.

Each teacher in the interim budget is counted as a full-time,

six-period employee, rated from a business perspective as a 1.0.

Teachers at the 1.2 or 1.6 level, who teach seven periods, a zero

period, or overtime, are also entered as 1.0s, or regular, full-time

teachers in the budget. As a result, fewer classes would be offered

to students, thus expanding the size, Daem said.

Daem said that, although the budget proposal would create larger

class sizes, she and the board think rescinding layoff notices and

absorbing some of the possible effects is the best move.

“Instead of going from the top and cutting out things,” Daem said,

“we went from the bottom and built [the budget] from all employees.”

Mirone stressed that if the plan turns into a bargaining process

between teachers and the district, then they’ll need a lot more than

a week or two to reach a solution. She doesn’t want to rush through

the process and end up, as a faculty, taking more extreme cuts than

other constituents in the district, she said.

Her association has ideas for cost cuts that affect classrooms

less, but she doesn’t feel they’ve been adequately heard by the

board, she said.

“If we are going to much larger class sizes,” Mirone said,

“whatever those may be, it would then become an economic issue,

because the teacher is working a lot harder in less desirable

conditions for less compensation.”

A contract between the district and faculty must be reached by

June 30, when teachers’ contracts expire. Mirone is willing to start

negotiating now.

PTA President Kristin Thomas said she also felt a bit leery of the

plan in the beginning, but now believes moving forward and solving

the issue with haste is most important.

“Maybe [teachers would] rather have their benefits and lay off

some teachers,” Thomas said. “My assumption was that the teachers

would want, as a group, as many people as possible.”