To stop a reduction of teaching staff next year, the Lebanon Community School District Budget Committee is looking at terminating the employment of some classified staff instead.

"Nobody wants to cut anyone's job, but we have to make tough decisions and someone is going to lose their job," said committee member Ginger Allen during a May 15 meeting.

The district is facing an estimated $1.9 million budget shortfall next year. Superintendent Jim Robinson said he thought most of the teaching cuts would come through retirements and resignations.

As much as possible was cut from the non-staff side before recommending cutting 8.5 teaching positions, Robinson said. For instance, there will be no new buses purchased next year and athletic spending will fall by $10,000.

In addition, the district is cutting the number of high school administrators from four to three and the number of hours facility operators are in schools. One administrative position at the district office is being eliminated by combining the transportation and food service departments.

School board member Josh Wineteer asked that the district's interim business manager, Tom Gaulke, prepare a list of options for the May 22 budget meeting detailing how many equivalent classified staff positions would need to be reduced for two to six teaching positions.

According to Wineteer, the number of non-instructional staff has risen from 46 in 1999 to 88 while the number of schools in the district has declined from 11 to eight.

"If we need to tighten up, I see that as a potential way we could make cuts and save some instructional positions," Wineteer said.

Pioneer School principal Kevin Bogatin and Riverview Principal Terry Hoagland told the committee that although they realize cuts need to be made, classified staff plays an important part in the functioning of schools.

"It's not like we have people sitting around cutting out paper Christmas trees," Bogatin said.

An increased number of special education and behaviorally-challenged students requiring personal care assistants accounts for some of the rise in classified staff, Robinson said. Also, by contract, teachers can only be given 30 minutes of non-instructional duty a week for things such as playground monitoring, which currently is performed by supervisor assistants.

"If they cut back on supervisor assistants there are going to be more accidents," said Lonnie Harris, president of the Lebanon Association of Classified Employee (LACE) after the meeting. "Our students are going to suffer because of these cuts."

Harris said she would like to see cuts made across the board, not just at the classified level.

"I don't want anyone to be cut, but it would be fairer to us," Harris said.

Complicating the budget committee's work is the school board's controversial May 5 approval of a five-year contract for Sand Ridge Charter School that increases the district's annual funding to the school by five percent. Gaulke prepared next year's proposed budget prior to the charter school vote.

Last week, Gaulke presented the committee two options for making up the additional $71,000 going to the charter school: cut 20 hours per week of classified staff time or 1.3 teaching positions. Gaulke recommended against further reduction in non-staff cuts such as building maintenance and textbook purchasing.

"Cuts will have to make their way back in, making budgeting in the future difficult," he said.

Wineteer argues that by capping Sand Ridge's student population at this year's level, the district will save about $1.3 million over the next five years. The current contract, which expires June 30, has allowed the charter school an 18-student-a-year increase. The state pays the district about $5,000 per student, of which the district has passed on the state mandated 80 percent to Sand Ridge. Under the new contract, the district will pay Sand Ridge 85 percent.

In April, Robinson and People Involved in Education - the nonprofit organization that runs Sand Ridge - had agreed to a one-year contract extension that would have frozen funding and student enrollment at this year's level. At the time Robinson and PIE president Jay Jackson presented it to the board, Robinson said postponing a longer term contract was prudent in light of lower than expected revenue projections.

That was overturned by the board's May 5 decision.