By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer
At a public hearing on the 2011-12 school budget last week, parents, teachers and other community members asked the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education not to make proposed cuts to foreign language, media assistants and areas that would directly affect the classroom.
The concerns stem from potential reductions identified by Superintendent Neil Pedersen that would be necessary should the state make large reductions in education funding.
Pedersen’s budget represents $59.2 million in local revenue, with the same level of funding from the county as for 2010-11, or about $36.6 million. The budget also assumes that the special-district tax rate would remain at 18.84 cents per $100 of valuation, and that the assessed value of the district tax base would increase 1 percent.
Under Gov. Beverly Perdue’s budget, the district would see a $1.6 million decrease in state funding, down to about $60.2 million.
However, Republican leadership in the legislature has proposed steeper cuts, and Pedersen has identified about $3 million in potential reductions should those cuts come to fruition.
Possible reductions include a two-day furlough for 12-month administrators, reducing elementary school media assistants to half-time, reducing one elective position per middle school, reducing the teacher allocation at the high school level, reducing elementary world language in first and second grade, reducing athletics allocations for middle and high schools, reducing gifted specialists and more.
Miriam Thompson, a grandmother of two Carrboro Elementary School students, said district supporters should lobby state representatives, since the deepest cuts were likely to come down from the state level.
“The state General Assembly right now is where I urge our energy be focused,†Thompson said. “We must do more. We must be extraordinary in these extraordinary times.â€
Christine Jernigan, a mother of two Ephesus Elementary School students and a teacher of foreign-language education at Duke University, said the board should not consider cutting world-language instruction from first and second grade.
“I’ve seen first-hand how starting later with language education greatly hinders our success,†she said. “We cannot afford to wait two to three years in learning oral language any more than we can afford to wait for math.â€
Several media assistants told the board how their full-time jobs allow school libraries to stay open longer.
“We as media assistants allow the library to have an open-door policy,†said Duncan Morgan, a media assistant at Scroggs Elementary School. “I don’t think that if our jobs are made half-time … you’re going to have the same impact.â€
Pedersen’s recommended budget also includes recommended reductions, which total about $1.2 million, including deleting an appropriation for evaluation and support of the literacy program, reducing one full-time and one part-time position for custodial services, suspending signing bonuses for hard-to-fill teaching assignments, reducing the budget for utilities due to effectiveness of conservation measures and reducing the amount of funding for budgeted salaries by 2 percent. Due to turnover and vacant positions, the district has been under-spending budgeted salary by at least 2 percent in recent years.
The budget also recommends an increase of $512,268 to fund new positions for exceptional education, translation services, transportation and new positions for technology.