More cuts recommended for Fulton schools

By Nancy Badertscher

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fulton County schools are bracing for the elimination of up to 1,000 jobs, including half of school social workers and all paraprofessionals in grades one to three.

Superintendent Cindy Loe warned school employees this week that the system may have to cut as much as $140 million from its budget in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1.

Some of the job cuts will come as a result of the school board's vote last month to push class sizes to the maximum, putting some teachers out of work and helping to scale back the system's costs for next year by about $38 million.

The other proposed job cuts are expected to be announced Tuesday night, when Loe goes before the school board with another $27.7 million in recommended reductions for fiscal 2011.

The collective impact will be the loss of about 1,000 jobs in a system that has 12,000 full-time employees and about 90,000 students, said Susan Hale, school system spokeswoman.

School officials hope -- if the recommended cuts are approved -- to be able to find jobs for many of the 1,000 workers through normal attrition in the system, Hale said.

"We're going to do everything we can to find them positions," she said.

Loe delivered the bad news to employees by video Thursday, predicting that the school board could eventually be forced to slash spending for 2011 by a total of $140 million because of the revenue downturn that has many governments in a tailspin. That would put the 2011 budget at about $715 million, down from $856 million in 2010.

"There will be more difficult decisions to come, including additional furloughs and possible pay reductions," Loe said in the video message.

In the information provided to employees, Loe said she will be calling for the elimination of half of the school system's social workers, psychologists and instructional support teacher positions, as well as recommending cuts in some custodial and counselor positions. The recommendation envisions saving nearly $1 million by cutting back the number of school resource officers (police officers) to one in north Fulton high schools and two in south Fulton high schools. And it would save another $867,000 by reducing media specialist positions to one per high school.

Parapros in regular classrooms in grades 1 to 3 would be eliminated, for a savings of $3.8 million, as well as the elementary school band and orchestra programs ($4.1 million). Other music programs would continue, and officials may try to continue band and orchestra as after-school, fee-based programs, Hale said.

She said more details on the job cuts will be available early next week.

School board members will get Loe's recommendations Tuesday and are expected to vote on them at their March 18 meeting, Hale said.

Employees whose jobs are being cut will be on the school system payroll through June 30. As part of last month's reductions, 35 central office jobs are being cut, of which 10  are currently occupied, Hale said.

Daniel Arshavsky, the parent of a Fulton County kindergartner and a violin teacher, said eliminating the orchestra and band programs would be "a terrible mistake."

"You have to do it when you are young," he said. Without classes in elementary school, many potential musicians won't have the opportunity to know "if they have the gift or not."