No school
closings planned

The schools system intends
to meet its budget with previously
planned cuts and higher fees

By Crystal Kua
Star-Bulletin

No school closings are part of the Department of Education's recommendations to Gov. Ben Cayetano to target up to $7.4 million this year and no more than $13.3 million next year for potential budget cuts.

The department instead is proposing to continue with cutbacks from previous years as part of its cost-cutting plan, state Schools Superintendent Paul LeMahieu told Board of Education members yesterday.

"This is money the schools never had," LeMahieu said.

The proposal also includes continuing internal budget restrictions, hiking school lunch from 75 cents to $1, raising fees in the A+ after-school program and adult education and eliminating some school-level programs.

The school-level programs cut are some of the same that the department proposed when asked by the Legislature in the spring to come up with budget-reduction scenarios of up to 10 percent. Those cuts were not implemented.

In a memo to the board earlier this month, Cayetano suggested several cost-cutting ideas for the department's $820 million budget that included closing schools that are small or have declining enrollments and transferring students from those schools to neighboring schools.

LeMahieu said the governor's suggestions should be examined. "All of those ideas need to be taken very seriously," LeMahieu said. "Yes, those things need to be considered -- all of them."

But little, if any, savings would be realized this current fiscal year because the preparation that goes into a proposed school closing takes time, LeMahieu said. "Schools cannot and will not be closed haphazardly."

The projected savings from closing a school may amount to little because about 80 percent of a school's budget goes toward salaries, he said. "The positions go somewhere else."

The governor said the department had to come up with proposed cuts for three different amounts for each year of the current biennium: $2.4 million, $4.9 million and $7.4 million for this fiscal year and $7.3 million, $10.3 million and $13.3 million for the next budget year.

What softened the blow this year was that the department had already anticipated a $15.2 million shortfall and made plans, which were approved by the board in June, to offset it through cuts.

The cuts include $500,000 from the school priority fund, $2 million for new textbooks and other instructional materials, $1.8 million in computer education, $1.17 million for summer school instruction, $1.5 million in incentive grants, $500,000 in state and district operations and $7.6 million in program restrictions. Cuts to these areas were imposed in previous budgets.

The receipt of federal money to offset some of the projected shortfalls coupled with leftover money from school budgets and internal spending restrictions will help the department to meet the governor's targets without resorting to additional cuts for the current fiscal year.

The next budget year, however, will include the same kind of cuts proposed for this year plus a school lunch price increase and fee hikes in the A+ after-school program from $55 to $70 and adult education. LeMahieu said the reason these "revenue enhancements" wouldn't be implemented until next year is because the process to seek those increases will take time and much public discussion.

The proposed hikes are expected to generate $2.1 million more in revenue but the hikes will likely mean a decrease in enrollment in these programs, although it's not known exactly by how much.

The department would also seek elimination of several programs for the second-year cuts, many of which are aimed at at-risk youth. They include Career Opportunities Program, Momilani Elementary At Risk, Comprehensive Positive Peer Prevention, Middle School concept implementation, Comprehensive Dropout Prevention, Maui Hui Malama and Hale O Ulu.