AURORA — Calling it the “worst fiscal crisis Aurora Public Schools has ever faced,” Superintendent John Barry and his staff tonight released results of surveys on how to balance the budget.
At a town hall meeting, Barry said the school district faces a budget shortfall of $25 million for the 2011-12 school year.
“Now we are cutting down to the bone,” Barry said.
The district surveyed parents and teachers on a variety of ways to balance the budget, including furlough days, salary freezes and even cutting the coaching budget and adding fees to play sports.
District officials are considering charging students to ride the bus, up to $1 day. But parents said that was their least favorable cut, according to the surveys.
At the top of the list for parents were reducing the non-school, non-labor general-fund budgets and furlough days.
For staff, early retirements were the top choice of places to trim the general-fund budget, which this year was at about $262 million.
Also making the top five was reducing the $100,000 payment to the teachers’ union.
Instituting up to four furlough days for the 2011-12 school year would save the district almost $4 million.
Officials also are considering increasing class sizes.
Teacher Angie Wojdyla, an English-language development teacher at Elkhart Elementary School, said she was concerned about a possible pay cut, furlough days and increasing class sizes.
Christie Alford, parent of a Jewell Elementary School third-grader, said APS should not increase class sizes. There are about 33 students in her third-grader’s class right now, she said.
“It’s too large,” Alford said. “When I go into the classroom to volunteer, it’s unruly.”
District officials have tried to keep cuts away from the classroom up until now. But that could change given the current economy.
The board will have a better sense of what it will have to cut when the state legislature makes its final ruling on K-12 funding in the spring.
“No decisions have been made,” Barry said. “We’re still in the process of getting input.”
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
