By CHRISTINA HOAG Associated Press (from Mercury News) | http://bit.ly/A1LxTF
Posted: 03/13/2012 11:10:23 PM PDT :: LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles Unified school board on Tuesday approved plans to ask voters for a parcel tax and employees for salary cuts to close a $390 million budget deficit, as several hundred employees protested noisily outside district headquarters.
As workers chanted "Save our schools" and other slogans, Superintendent John Deasy said the district could continue popular adult education and preschool programs if labor unions agreed to a one-year pay cut across the board that would save $220 million.
The board also approved putting a $298 parcel tax on the November ballot to raise $255 million a year for the next five years.
Elsewhere, San Francisco Unified School District teachers also held a rally to protest 500 layoff notices sent Monday, and voters in the Arcadia Unified School District went to the polls to cast ballots on a $228, five-year parcel tax to raise $3.4 million annually.
A preliminary count showed the Arcadia measure passing by a nose with 9,219 yes votes and 2,970 no votes for 67.61 percent, just over the two-thirds needed to pass, according to numbers released by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder.
Absentee and provisional ballots would be counted, and the official result announced, on Wednesday.
Districts around California are grappling with an especially cloudy funding picture for the next academic year.
Many sent out layoff warning notices this week to comply with state law that stipulates districts must send notices to employees by March 15 for layoffs to take effect the next school year.
Many of the notices are usually rescinded by June 30 as the revenue estimates become firmer, but this year, districts in their fourth consecutive year of state funding cuts face an even rockier budget scenario.
Billions of dollars in education funding depend on three initiatives proposed for the November ballot. They would raise sales taxes, income taxes or possibly both.
"We have no way to plan," said Dennis Meyers, assistant executive director of the California School Board Association, at a news conference school-related organizations held in Sacramento.
Statewide, about 20,000 preliminary pink slips were estimated to be issued by the end of the week to teachers and other school employees, estimated Estelle Lemieux, a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association.
The LAUSD has already noticed 11,700 full and part-time employees, but Deasy said he expected some of the warnings to be rescinded. Last year, LAUSD rescinded 3,400 of the 7,300 notices it sent out.
Unions decry the notices as bad for morale and a scare tactic designed to prod employees into giving concessions such as furloughs and pay cuts.
"Every year we see the lives of teachers destabilized by the pink slip process and schools thrown into chaos," said Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles. "We are budgetary hostages and budgetary bargaining chips."
The union and the district are currently in arbitration over furloughs for this year that would save the district $60 million.
Meyers noted that even if the state tax measures are approved, half of the $4.7 billion in extra revenue will be used to pay IOUs issued by the state for the preceding school year. Many districts have had to borrow money in order to keep operating until the end of the school year, he said.
"This is causing cash flow problems and borrowing costs for districts," he said.
California voters have a history of rejecting tax increases, causing some districts to consider parcel taxes to generate their own revenue.
In order to pass, parcel taxes need the approval of two-thirds of voters. LAUSD's last parcel tax measure in 2010 was defeated with 52 percent of the vote.
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