Last month, after weeks of debate, the DeKalb County school board closed the district's budget deficit with nearly $80 million in spending cuts.
But on Wednesday the board blinked when called to implementcuts that would have laid off employees and shaved up to $20.5 million in salary and benefit costs, rendering the recently approved budget unenforceable.
Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson had asked the board to eliminate 250 teachers and 120 paraprofessionals, so she could reduce expenses in compliance with the fiscal 2013 budget, which took effect July 1.
However, several of the seven board members present said they weren't going to do it, including Nancy Jester, who seemed to mock Atkinson. Last year, after Atkinson was hired, the new superintendent told audiences that her goal was "victory in the classroom."
Jester said she understood the need to cut spending, "but," she said, "this is not victory in the classroom, and I have a problem with that."
The $730 million general fund budget was approved by a slim majority June 21. Jester voted with the opposition, saying more non-classroom expenses, such as busing for select children at magnet and theme schools, should have been eliminated.
Board Chairman Eugene Walker voted for the budget, yet announced Wednesday that he also opposed the layoffs.
Walker noted that teachers had already turned in signed contracts for employment starting in the fall.
"I want to honor those contracts," Walker said. "I cannot issue contracts in good faith and then three weeks before school opens tell them they don't have jobs. That's why I can't vote for it."
Only Jay Cunningham, who voted for the budget despite oft-expressed reservations about cutting teachers, said he'd vote for the layoffs.
The budget increases class sizes by two students per teacher. Each student increase in average class size equals about 110 to 120 teachers. The budget also cuts scores of specialty teaching positions at magnet and Montessori schools and at the Fernbank Science Center.
Atkinson hoped to accommodate those cuts without layoffs, since hundreds of teachers retire or leave voluntarily in a normal year. These are abnormal times, though, and too few have departed.
"We do not have enough vacancies to absorb the board's vote on the class size," Atkinson said. "That's the way it is." She said she can't implement the board's budget-cutting mandate without the authority to lay off displaced employees.
The requested cuts come atop more than 400 employees that the board authorized laying off in late June, including paraprofessionals, media center staff and interpreters.
Walker, realizing that his board needed time to search out a compromise, ended the meeting, and said the board would reconvene today at 10 a.m. at 1701 Mountain Industrial Boulevard, Stone Mountain.
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