It's becoming an annual exercise. Like other districts in our area, the Bellevue School District has started working on ways to cut the 2010-11 general fund budget. But this year, the district is asking residents to weigh in with ideas about where to save school dollars.

The district expects to need to make cuts of $4 million to $6 million. (This year's budget total is $173 million.)

In the previous two years, Bellevue has had to cut a total of $10 million from its general fund budget, said district spokeswoman Ann Oxrieder. The impact of last year's cuts were dampened somewhat by federal stimulus money, but that money is starting to go away.

Cutting the budget is becoming increasingly difficult without trimming jobs because 80 percent of the district's budget goes to salaries.

Last year, Bellevue eliminated a number of noncontinuing contracts, and also got rid of its secondary-school librarian positions. One school, Tillicum Middle, received a grant from the PTSA to hire their librarian to teach library research skills for three days to all 6th graders. But the rest of the librarian positions were lost; two librarians returned to the classroom, two went on leave for a year, one librarian retired, and one librarian's contract was not renewed.

Eliminating library positions was a particularly contentious issue. This year, the district is borrowing a public procedure that the neighboring Lake Washington School District used to try to identify cuts. An interactive worksheet is being used to ask residents to identify programs to trim, or ways to raise more money.

There are two remaining public information sessions on the budget: March 18 in the Sammamish High School Cafeteria at 5 p.m., and March 24, Interlake High School PAC, starting at 6 p.m. You don't need to go to the public sessions to fill out the feedback worksheet, but it will help. There's also a short PowerPoint presentation online that provides an overview of the budget situation.

Ready to send Bellevue your advice? There are directions on how to fill out the form on the district's Web site. Here's a link to the interactive worksheet you can use to register your decision about what to cut. To fill out the worksheet, you'll need this reference guide.

The worksheet is available through March 25.