District Could Eliminate Sports, Close Schools

It's dark times at the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District. The district, having undergone years of cuts stretching back to 2001, must plan for another round of punishing cuts.

This time school sports and some schools may not survive after the budget process, K-3 class teacher-to-student ratios may go up to 32:1. Even seemingly rudimentary things like custodial services could be slashed by $118,000.

(To see more detail, click on the PDF attached to this article. I recommended you print it out, the fonts are very small.)

The board will vote on a series of potential cuts at it meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday. Patch will be there live blogging the board meeting and taking your questions and comments in real time.

Kelly Morgan, Assistant Superintendent, said the schools cannot go along with Gov. Jerry Brown's budget -- which assumes voters will increase taxes -- but must plan for a shortfall of money. A $6.5 million shortfall for the district.

"The county board (of education) is telling us we have to plan based on those taxes failing," Morgan said.

She said the district is talking to bargaining units, but can't depend on any savings from results of those talks until the closed door bargaining is done.

But recent economic reports give Morgan a sense that there may not be cuts in following years.

"My sense is that things will get better in the future," she said. "It's going to be a very slow recovery according to what we've seen in the economic reports."

But the past 11 years have been devastating to the district.

"We've cut $40 million out of a $180 million budget," she said. "Literally we're looking at things we're not mandated to do like cutting sports and closing schools."