LAUSD may cut school year by six days next year

Our VUSD ANTI friends like to pretend that only VUSD has financial problems. Of course that is not true.

The state of California provides on average 60% of the funds for local districts.

In the rural school district where I was superintendent/teacher, the percentage was more than 90%. Less than 10% was from local sources.

So obviously every school district in California is in trouble not just VUSD.

Here is what LAUSD school board is discussing to reduce expenses due to projected state cut backs for next year:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd13-2010feb13,0,3318048.story


L.A. Unified may cut school year by 6 days

Supt. Ramon Cortines says the action would save $90 million and 5,000 jobs.
By Jason Song and Howard Blume
February 13, 2010
Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines proposed Friday cutting six days from the school year to help reduce an estimated $640-million deficit and avoid the need for widespread layoffs in the nation's second-largest school system.

The move, announced by news release Friday evening, would save the district $90 million and could spare up to 5,000 jobs, Cortines said. The alternative to this drastic action, he said, would be to let the district go bankrupt.

"Do I think [this] is good education policy? No," he said. "But we are in a real crisis."

Cortines has repeatedly said that he did not want to shorten the school year. This is the first time in recent history that a Los Angeles school superintendent has made such a suggestion.

Five of the affected days would be classroom days and the sixth would be a noninstructional day.

Union leaders would have to agree to the move. Nonunion employees, including senior district staff, have been ordered to take four furlough days by May, and Cortines criticized groups that have not been willing to make concessions.

"I'm tired of the selfish attitudes of some," he said.

Four labor groups have already decided to accept the furlough days, but the teachers and administrators unions have balked so far.

A.J. Duffy, president of the teachers union, said that a one-time shortening of the school year was preferable to a permanent pay cut and that he was willing to "sit down at the table" to discuss taking six days off the school year. "Nobody denies we're in a fiscal crisis," he said.