Vader schools cut 4 employees' hours
Friday, May 26, 2006 10:29 AM PDT
By Barbara LaBoe
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe Vader School District has cut four employees' hours in response to the apparent levy and bond failures earlier this month.
Superintendent JoAnn Anshutz confirmed Thursday that the district's four classified employees were told Wednesday their hours will be cut. The district still is evaluating whether it can afford busing, so bus drivers' hours have not yet cut, Anshutz said.
Anshutz said she did not know yet how much cutting the hours of the school's janitor, secretary, cook and teacher's aid will save the district.
"I'm still looking at that," she said, adding the budget is "still in the planning stages."
Anshutz said she's cutting everything she can at this point.
"You determine the minimum the school can be run on, and then you go from there," she said. "We're making cuts everywhere we can to try to get the costs down. ... Every dollar counts."
Anshutz said all employees -- including the district's five teachers -- will feel the effect of cuts, but the classified staffers learned of their cuts now because they are the only employees not currently renegotiating contracts. The levy would have provided roughly 20 percent of the district's operating budget for the coming school year. Neither the levy nor the bond can be rerun until February. (The results aren't final until Friday, but both Lewis and Cowlitz county officials said Thursday they don't expect the results to change).
The district won't get $195,000 if the levy fails.
In addition, the failure of the district's $2.8 million bond forces officials to find money to tear down the condemned gymnasium. They had been under order to tear it down by the end of June, but Lewis County has granted the district an extension through Aug. 21 -- before any students return for the fall.
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