New year begins with DeKalb school bus cutbacks

The new year starts out in recession, and DeKalb County public school students and parents will be among the first to feel the effects.

Starting Tuesday — the first day back from winter break — fewer buses will be taking kids to school, one of several cost-cutting measures expected in DeKalb schools this year.

WHO IS AFFECTED

Most students who attend schools outside their neighborhood face the busing cutbacks. The change affects about 5,600 of the district’s 99,600 students, including those in magnet schools, charter schools and academic theme schools or who transferred from lower-performing campuses. Other cutbacks, including layoffs, will hit everyone from midlevel administrators to service technicians — but not teachers.

DeKalb has designated some schools as transportation hubs. Parents must drop off their children at these campuses to be picked up by school buses and taken to school. Parents are responsible for picking up the children at the same hubs after school. This is a change from the system’s former policy, which bused many students almost door to door.

However, the change brings the system more in line with other metro Atlanta school systems. Cobb County, for example, uses a hub-type method to bus kids to its magnet high schools. Gwinnett County does not provide out-of-area transportation for its choice schools.

The busing cutbacks are worth an annual savings of $4 million. The plan also includes layoffs, with 127 employees slated to lose their jobs in June.

WHY CUT

Because of the sour economy and state funding cuts, school board members in late fall approved more than $20 million in budget cuts. The decision came after the state cut funding midyear; given the economy, officials expect the state will cut at least another 1 percent of DeKalb’s school funding for the next school year.

DeKalb — which started the year with a general fund budget of $894.1 million — has since 2002 lost about $100 million in state funds because of so-called “austerity reductions.” Gov. Sonny Perdue implemented the cuts in response to the massive budget shortfall he faced after he won office in 2002. State revenue rebounded by early 2006, but the cuts continued and are expected to persist, if not deepen, during the recession. Just this school year, the system lost $10.5 million in a midyear state cut.

ELSEWHERE

Although DeKalb has taken the most decisive action, other metro school systems have begun to talk about cuts they, too, may need to make. School board members of the small city system in Decatur expect next week to hear how their superintendent wants to cut $2 million for next school year, possibly including layoffs. Clayton County’s schools, meanwhile, stand to lose about $27 million in state money next year after more than 3,200 students fled the district when it lost its accreditation.