Schools, students see impact of cash crunch

Meredith Westerside loved her work as a Bellevue School District librarian. But this year, for the first time in 20 years, she's back teaching English — part of the fallout from the deepest cuts in public-school funding in decades.

With the new school year under way, parents, students, teachers and staff in many districts across the state are feeling those cuts in ways large and small. Classes are bigger, new textbook orders are on hold, fees to play sports are up, music programs shut down and bus service cut back.

The Edmonds School District, for example, eliminated routes that served about 3,000 students.

Fewer teachers lost their jobs than many feared last spring. In the end, districts retained more teachers' jobs than they thought they could. By September, most teachers had been recalled — including about 130 of 161 Seattle teachers who had received pink slips in May.

Districts received some financial help from the federal stimulus program, but they also scoured their budgets, sometimes coming up with creative ways to save.

Still, many started this school year with fewer teachers and programs than they had last fall, with no relief in sight here or across the nation. Many districts also expect to make more cuts for next fall, and the fall after that, when federal stimulus money runs out.

Fears about next year

"It's the 2011-12 school year that keeps me up at night right now," said Sally McLean, chief financial officer for the Federal Way School District.

"We pray for a state economic recovery."

Only a few districts avoided increasing class sizes.

The Bellevue School District, for example, has 60 fewer teachers, counselors and librarians than it did last year — an average of nearly two staff members per building.

Federal Way increased class sizes, too, as did Seattle (in fourth and fifth grades), Shoreline, Edmonds and Issaquah.

"There was just about nowhere else to go without wholesale ripping out of programs, " said Sara Niegowski, Issaquah School District spokeswoman.

On average, class sizes didn't increase much in the bigger districts in King and Snohomish counties — one or two students per class at most. But students can't be spread out that evenly, so the impact is greater in some schools and classes.

Even in the Mercer Island School District, one of the wealthiest, some classrooms are bigger. The district cut $2 million in expenses for this school year, even after parents raised $430,000 last spring to restore the equivalent of roughly six positions.

"There will be some classes that will have a larger number of students," Superintendent Gary Plano said. "Teachers will have additional papers to grade, additional students to monitor. Some clubs and activities may not occur."

Class sizes would have increased even more if districts hadn't also made cuts in nearly every other part of their operations — from top administrative jobs to custodians.

The Lake Washington School District, for example, eliminated one-third of its bus stops. Sports fees climbed to $275 from $100 per sport in high schools, and all-day kindergarten classes now cost $3,300 per year, up from $2,650.

"For our community, [higher fees] are more of an option," district spokeswoman Kathryn Reith said.

Lake Washington also asked teachers to remove all personal microwaves and refrigerators from their rooms — part of an effort to save $200,000 in energy costs.

In Edmonds, along with bus-service cuts and increased class sizes, district leaders asked employees to forgo a day or two of pay, didn't fill vacancies and postponed textbook purchases. The district also now has six groundskeepers — down from 10 last year — to care for 33 schools.

Seattle Public Schools, seeing the state budget crunch coming, decided in January to close four schools, then rejiggered bus times, laid off central-office staff and economized by delivering food to middle and high schools from its central kitchens rather than employing people to prepare it on-site.

Similar steps taken

Each district approached reductions a little differently, but there were common themes.

Many districts reassigned former teachers such as Westerside from libraries or central-office jobs to the classroom.

In Mukilteo, the district redeployed teachers who last year traveled from school to school to give extra support to struggling students. "Classroom teachers will have to pick up the load a little bit more," district spokesman Andy Muntz said.

In Everett, 17 master teachers who had been working as coaches to help colleagues are back in the classroom, too. "That is a huge, almost-unseen impact," district spokeswoman Mary Waggoner said.

In Bellevue, Westerside was one of about a half-dozen middle- and high-school librarians whose jobs were eliminated. She is glad to have a job and said she's enjoying getting to know students better than she could as a librarian. But the change has been hard, too.

An aide keeps the library open at Interlake High, one of two schools where she worked last school year. But there is no one to teach research skills.

"It's the students who are going to miss out," Westerside said, "by not having that skilled professional available."

In the Issaquah, Highline and Edmonds districts, some receptionists have been replaced with answering machines, and the public is being asked for patience when phone calls aren't returned as quickly as before.

Creativity in hard times

The challenge also spawned creativity.

In Issaquah, for example, administrators restored a teacher-training day that had been cut by state legislators by focusing that day on special education — and using federal dollars earmarked for special-education programs to pay for it.

And in Renton, Superintendent Mary Alice Heuschel asked her leadership team and other administrators to volunteer to work three to five days without pay. Teachers lost one day of work when the state cut the training day, she said, so she believed administrators should share in that pain.

"It was symbolic in that we're part of the team to try to make the best of a difficult situation," Heuschel said.

Bus stops repositioned

In Edmonds, the district strategically placed bus stops just outside the one-mile zone around schools, far enough so the state will pick up the tab, according to district spokeswoman DJ Jakala.

That means some of the 3,000 students whose routes were eliminated can choose to walk to a more distant bus stop if that's a shorter — or safer — way to school.

That's what parent Christa Johnson decided to do. Otherwise, her choices were to drive to College Place Elementary every day or walk her elementary-school children nearly a mile to school, crossing busy Highway 99 along the way.

She is chaperoning a half-dozen neighbor kids to the bus stop, too, because their parents must leave for work before school starts.

She said she believes young children shouldn't have to walk that far by themselves, but she wouldn't want class sizes to increase, either. "You have to pick the lesser of two evils, right?" she said.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com