School district to cut 150 teachers PLUS librarians ect...Thanks to BUSH

[greenbriar]

Eliminating those positions will save the district about $346,565. Pleasant Valley Middle School will also lose an assistant principal, saving about $69,313. All will move to other positions.

As difficult as those cuts may be, board members said Monday the proposals to eliminate middle school team planning time and half of the budget for librarians are the most troubling because they would hurt teachers' ability to help kids.

"The impact of this is astronomical," board member Lanora Nolan said about losing middle school team time. The cut would eliminate 49 middle school teaching positions and save roughly $2.2 million.

Sheril Logan, assistant superintendent for middle schools, said if the board cuts team time, the schools will have to rework all their schedules and the district's efforts to improve middle schools would suffer.

Board member Connie Dietz said she was concerned about the proposal to eliminate 18 librarians to save roughly $923,000. The time that students spend with librarians is often when teachers get time to plan lessons and collaborate with other teachers.

Superintendent Winston Brooks said the cuts are ranked to protect classroom teaching positions as much as possible. If the board decides not to cut items such as team time, then other cuts would have to be made.

Brooks emphasized that this will be the third straight year of cuts, which makes it more difficult to find savings that won't hurt students.

The district must make cuts because health insurance, salaries and utilities will all cost more next school year. But officials won't say how big a deficit schools face until contracts with two employee unions are settled.

[SharonAnn]

1. Where is this?

[Kolesar]

2. I would expect Kansas, where Pam is

A link would be swell. The mods may get freaky about copyrights on all those paragraphs.