No furloughs, but DeKalb teachers take retirement hit

By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

There will be no new furloughs in DeKalb County schools for the coming year, but teachers and administrators will get a little less money when they retire.

The county school board responded Monday to state budget cuts by eliminating payments to retirement savings accounts for teachers and administrators.

The move will save $26 million - as much as $10 million more than was needed because of belt-tightening by the state.

As part of state budget cuts, Georgia is slashing money that supplements local school districts. Gov. Sonny Perdue had recommended that locals furlough teachers to accommodate the cuts. Some counties, such as Gwinnett, Fulton and Forsyth, decided to do just that. Others, including Cobb and now DeKalb, found other ways to shave money.

DeKalb had already built one teacher furlough day - May 25 - into the coming school year because of local revenue shortages. Officials didn’t want to saddle employees with additional pay cuts, noting that teachers may have spouses who have lost a job.

“Right now, in this economy, people are very strapped, and the slightest adjustment to paychecks would be noticed,” said Tom Bowen, the school board chairman. He and all seven other board members present at the meeting voted for the school superintendent’s proposal. It cuts the contributions to the school system’s tax sheltered annuity for teachers and administrators from August through June.

Other employees, such as cooks, custodians and bus drivers, will be unaffected. So will school payments into the state pension system for teachers. The annuity is a supplemental investment program. The school system contributes the money, and employees manage their accounts.

School Superintendent Crawford Lewis pledged to return every un-needed penny to the retirement accounts after the current fiscal year ends next year.

The state cuts mean a loss of $16 million to $20 million for DeKalb, but Lewis said the governor’s staff told him more cuts would be coming next year. DeKalb reduced its budget more than necessary to prepare for that.

“It allows us to get ahead of the cuts that are coming in January 2010,” Lewis said.

The county’s 5,000-strong teachers union endorsed the decision, said David Schutten, president of the Organization of DeKalb Educators.

“This seems like the best alternative among a lot of difficult choices,” he said.