By Ann Rubin
Chesterfield, MO (KSDK) - There will be big budget cuts in one of the area's biggest school districts.
The Parkway District plans to cut as much as $9.6 million from its budget over the next two years.
They passed the measure tonight, saying in this economy, they simply had no choice.
For the sake of her son's education, Elizabeth Kayser admits she had concerns about the cuts at first.
"People don't like uncertainty, of course not. And being a parent of a third grader at Barretts, I was concerned and on guard as far as how they were going to make the budget cuts," said Kayser.
But she believes the Parkway District is doing the best they can.
District officials say due to a tough economy, they have to cut three to five percent of their budget, amounting to between $7.4 and 9.6 million over the next two years.
Cuts will come from several areas including district administrators and support staff. They plan to cut 20 positions, mostly through attrition.
And there's the district operating budgets which will reduced by 10 percent.
And then they plan to use what they call greater efficiencies. That means centralizing the registration process, eliminating some part time personnel, reducing overtime and using electronic report cards.
"If we can do it without raising class sizes and no teachers losing their positions and the majority of others happening through attrition and the quality of education is still going to be outstanding, we should consider that a success," said District spokesman Paul Tandy.
One of the more controversial parts of the proposal includes restructuring the reading and math intervention programs. And while the district says the impact on students will be minimal, parents want to make sure that's the case.
The only people who will truly lose if you go ahead with such an unstructured plan are our children.
But the Kaysers disagree. They believe the district has made the best of bad situation.
"There has to be a lot of commitment to make this work and I have faith that there will be. But this is a work in progress," said Kayser.
The district says they won't know the total number of job cuts until after they assess their staffing in April. The budget will be implemented in July.
KSDK