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Suncoast Pinellas News

Shrinking Problem

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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: December 6, 2008

Things not going well? Cheer up. It could be worse. You could be a member of the Pinellas County School Board.

Potentially faced with the never-pleasant task of closing schools because of a projected plunge in School District enrollment, the board is also grappling with the possibility of having to cut off bus transportation to some students. This move could hit low-income families the hardest.

As if both of those PR nightmares weren't bad enough, the School Board was told by an outside arbitrator it can't make middle school teachers handle, without additional pay, six classes a day instead of five. District officials had hoped this would save $2.2 million as it tried to meet the state's ill-advised class size limit mandate.

The district is changing the bus rules as bad economic times causes school revenue to drop. "Do we spend our money on buses or do we spend our money on making our schools better?" School Superintendent Julie Janssen wondered aloud during a School Board workshop this week. The state's school funding formula is based on enrollment. So a projected loss of 10,000 students by 2013 would mean even less money for Pinellas schools unless the formula is altered.

Amid this late-fall gloom there is one bit of brightness for the board. The arbitrator who ended the unpaid sixth period for middle school teachers, effective this January, didn't order the district to retroactively pay the teachers for the added classroom time.

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