School staffing may be trimmed

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District is aiming to cut more than $8 million from next year’s budget in the face of shrinking funding, officials said Tuesday at a school board study session.

Roughly $5 million will come from program cuts, while another $3 million will come from short-term fixes like delaying equipment replacement, said Deputy Supt. Paul Reed, the district’s chief financial officer.

While the equivalent of 36 full-time jobs will disappear next year, those losses will mostly come from attrition rather than mass layoffs, Reed said.

“Many of those folks will find places elsewhere in the district as they open through attrition,” he said. “We’re holding hiring at this time and only replacing essential positions. Unlike some districts, we’re not [giving notice of potential layoffs] to hundreds of teachers. We’re being very careful in how we affect the human side.”

Some cuts and savings include: cutting assistant principals at several schools; the merger of Middle College High School into Early College High School; a reduction in nurse staffing; and having students pre-register for schools in the spring, saving $1 million in extra clerical staff.

The area getting cut the most is special education, where Reed said the district will save $2 million next year. Those cuts include the equivalent of 7 1/2 full-time staff positions, as well as a consolidation of programs to reduce busing and a reduction in contracts to programs outside of the district.

Reed defended the move by saying that district special education was using extra personnel over recent years because it was retooling its programs.

“In the last four years we have changed our special-education model and geared up to make a transition,” he said. “In the transition we needed more people, and we knew we were going to have additional expenditures for a while. Now we’ve moved through that, we’re going to have reductions.”

Supt. Jeffrey Hubbard said his staff was trying hard to make sure that everyone in the district was well informed about tough budgetary cuts to come.

“We’re not experiencing Draconian cuts other districts are, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t very serious about how we’re approaching this,” Hubbard said.

The district has done a good job of keeping teachers informed as budget issues develop, said Frank Oppedisano, executive director of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers.

“They’ve been really good in talking to the union along the way, letting us know about different things,” he said.

Despite all the planning, Reed said the district was at the whim of legislators.

“This positions us as well as we can position ourselves for what is coming,” Reed said.

“But [the state legislature] could blow us out of the water next week.”

Reporter MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael. [email protected].