Hundreds of Syracuse City School District employees opened their mailboxes earlier this week to find pink slips.

The district’s Board of Education has been issuing layoff notices to employees, who will now be left jobless at the end of the school year in June. The board plans to cut 584 jobs, about 14 percent of its approximately 4,000 employees, to balance the 2010-11 district budget of $354.5 million, said Suzanne Slack, chief financial officer for the district.

The district sent out notices to 324 employees last Friday and will send out 103 more layoff notices by the end of next week, Slack said. The school board has identified about 446 specific job cuts out of the 584 it plans to make, she said.

Richard Strong, president of the district’s school board, said he doesn’t expect to make less than 584 job cuts. There currently aren’t enough employees retiring early for the number of cuts to change, he said. 

When looking at the budget, Strong said there’s nothing left to cut except jobs. 

‘We made every attempt to try to avoid impacting the education classroom, but it’s at a point where 85 percent or more of your budget is people. You’re going to check the classroom,’ he said. ‘And that’s where we’re at now.’

Of the cuts already identified, 158 teaching assistants, 39 custodial workers, 23 school monitors and 11 nurses will lose their jobs at the end of the year, among many others. Last year, 240 jobs were cut in the district compared to 50 the year before, Slack said. 

Within the district, there are about 2,200 teachers, 800 to 900 teaching assistants and only approximately 100 administrators, she said. 

Cutting jobs — even if it’s custodial workers or cafeteria workers — ends up hindering the teacher’s ability to educate the students, Slack said. 

‘We’re going to capsize the district,’ she said.

The district is also cutting 28.5 special education positions. Slack said the district is currently thinking about how to provide special education services cheaper and more efficiently. 

Christine Ashby, an assistant professor in the School of Education at Syracuse University, said special education positions have taken a disproportionately large hit. Special education jobs are commonly cut when school districts face difficult economic times, which is unfortunate because the service those teachers provide benefit the special education students and other students in the school, Ashby said. 

By cutting special education positions, ‘it forces the district to be really creative in the way they provide those services,’ said Ashby, who teaches in the Inclusive Elementary and Special Education Program. 

The district had Educational Resource Services — an outside agency that offers training programs and educational products for school districts — come out last year and look at the district, Slack said. To cut jobs, she said the district went through each department and took into consideration the data prepared by Educational Resource Services. 

To save costs, the district also closed Bellevue Middle School Academy, sending the school’s 400 children to three or four other schools, Slack said. On Tuesday night, the school board discussed cutting about 30 more middle school jobs, but they decided not to go forward with it, she said.

The school board is trying to make educational decisions based off the district’s financial deficiencies, which makes cuts difficult, Slack said. 

‘The state doesn’t have enough money, so you’re going back to cut things you know are good for the kids,’ she said.

The tentative district budget for 2011-12 is $331.7 million, a 6.4 percent decrease from the current budget, Slack said. The 2011-12 budget, which is almost $23 million less than the 2010-11 budget, puts the district back at the 2008 spending amount despite higher costs, she said. 

Although the district is planning to cut 584 jobs, the final number of layoffs will not be known until after the state passes its budget, Slack said. The New York state budget is due April 1 and must deal with a $10 billion deficit. 

The district relies on the state for the majority of its money, as state aid accounts for 74 cents of every General Fund dollar the district receives, Slack said. She said Cuomo’s cut is equal to about 7 percent of the district’s general fund. 

Strong, the district’s Board of Education president, said the board is currently arguing about how many sports programs and English teachers to cut. 

‘We’re down to the ‘I don’t want to touch that position, you don’t want to touch that position,” he said. ‘We all have arguments why we want to do one thing or another, but the fact is that there’s going to be a lot of loss. There’s not much we can do.’

jdharr04@syr.edu

Published on March 23, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Jon: jdharr04@syr.edu