Faced with a budget shortfall of nearly $1 million, the Marysville School District may have to lay off up to 50 nonteaching school staff by March 1, even after making an earlier round of cuts.
No teachers will be let go. Those laid off would be paraprofessionals, secretaries and custodians, Superintendent Larry Nyland said.
The layoffs are not expected to include school bus drivers and food service staff, he said.
The layoffs could affect about 1 of 10 of the school district’s noncertified employees, Nyland said.
Under state law, teachers and principals can’t be laid off in the middle of the school year.
“We just continue to have to make difficult decisions, decisions we thought we’d never have to make or couldn’t make,” Nyland said.
The school district has little choice in where to make more cuts, he said.
It’s already made $1.4 million in budget reductions, by trimming items such as new textbooks, paying for training and supplies and the budgets of individual schools.
“We’re still $993,772 short,” he said. “The only other place we can go is staff.”
The cuts expected to be decided by the school district this year follow cuts to education funding made by the Legislature in December: $250 million in public school funding to be gone in mid-2011.
The state cuts “turned our budget completely upside-down,” Nyland said.
Other education cuts proposed by the governor will be decided by the Legislature, which is in session now in Olympia.
Arden Watson, president of the Marysville Education Association, said she has attended several staff meetings about the school district’s budget. Teachers are upset, she said.
The mid-year cuts by the Legislature, she said, take money retroactively that lawmakers had promised the school district.
“To be told part way through the year that, ‘No, you’re not going to get the money for that,’ is very unfair and impacts students in Marysville,” Watson said.
For example, some of the cuts include not having the funds to adopt new science curriculum at the high-school and middle-school levels, she said.
“We don’t normally have cuts in the middle of the school year,” Watson said. “This is unusual. These cuts will have a direct, negative impact on our students. Period.”
A draft recommendation on the layoffs is expected to be completed by the end of this month, Nyland said. The school board is to be asked to approve the layoffs in February. Any layoffs would take effect March 1, he said.
In trying to look at every possible place to cut, the district has taken nearly $686,000 from its year-end balance. The district’s overall operating budget is $111 million.
It is now projected to end the year with a balance of about $2 million, Nyland said.
That money that is set aside for cash flow, in essence to ensure it has enough money to pay bills, and as part of prudent financial management, he said.
The school district previously decided that varsity athletic programs at Marysville Getchell High School will not begin for another year, and about half of the sports programs for seventh- and ninth-graders will be reduced starting this spring, Nyland said.
Herald reporter Amy Daybert contributed to this report.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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