Jobs cut to allow teacher raises

Although the district cut 200 positions, no teachers have lost jobs.

Palm Beach County’s public school teachers are in negotiations for a pay raise, and they’re in luck. The count y School Board has already set aside millions of dollars to increase their salaries.

But those raises will come at a price: budget cuts and fewer teachers at many of the county’s schools.

To fifind money for pay raises, School Board members this summer quietly approved $14 million in budget cuts at the county’s approximately 170 public schools.

The cutbacks meant the elimination of about 200 teacher positions, school district administrators say.

That’s a small fraction of the school district’s 11,400 teachers, but enough to affffffffffffect class sizes at many campuses. No teachers were fifired, administrators say. Instead, positions were eliminated through attrition by adjusting student-to-teacher ratios.

But having fewer teachers has forced principals to think creatively about how to accommodate students.

“It hurt,” said David Samore, principal of Okeeheelee Middle School in West Palm Beach. “I actually have more students enrolled here

than I had last year, but I have two fewer teachers.”

Samore said he was able to make things work with minimal increases to class sizes. He added that he and other principals supported the cutbacks as a necessary step to raise teacher salaries.

“We principals as a group understood that,” he said. “We want our teachers to feel like they’re respected.”

During the last school year, the teachers union clashed with school district administrators, criticizing them for offffffffffffering raises that covered only part of the year. Administrators said the school system couldn’t afffffffffffford more.

This year, board members decided to set aside money for raises ahead of time. All told, 27 million is being held in reserve for salary boosts for the district’s roughly 21,000 employees, said Mike Burke, the school district’s chief fifinancial offifficer.

Despite eliminating about 200 teacher positions, the school district has just 89 fewer teachers than last year because increases in student enrollment offffset some of the reductions, Burke said.

Teachers union President Kathi Gundlach said she was pleased that money had been put aside for raises, but she said she was not aware that the School Board had eliminated teacher positions in order to fifind the money.

She questioned why savings for raises couldn’t have been found by eliminating unnecessary programs instead.

“They can put money in the budget for raises rather than buy programs,” she said. “We’ve always been a district that values programs over people.”

School board member Mike Murgio called the school budget cuts a necessary step to raise pay for teachers and other workers.

“I think we need to do something for all our employees,” he said. “Salaries were one thing that the board felt very strongly about. I think it was a good decision.”

School Board Chairman Chuck Shaw agreed the cuts were needed, and he pointed out that no one was fifired. To the contrary, hundreds of new teachers were hired to replace ones who had retired or resigned.

He said the effffffffffffect of higher student-to-teacher ratios should be minimal at most schools if planned for correctly.

“This is most defifinitely something that principals can manage,” he said. “They have the skills to do that.”

Bobbi Moretto, prin- cipal of Coral Reef Elementary west of Lantana, said that in most cases the impact of fewer teachers can be spread across several grade levels, meaning that teachers and students are unlikely to notice many effffffffffffec ts.

“Yes, there are fewer teachers,” she said, “but it’s not that any one teacher is going to have that many more students. It’s usually an even distribution across a number of grade levels.”

In addition to cutting

school