With the time running out for Cleveland Metropolitan School District to balance its budget, meetings on both sides of town were held for parents to weigh in on the choices facing the district.
“It really wasn’t a choice to make,” said Rhonda Hills.
Hills has two children, ages 7 and 17, attending Cleveland schools. She attended the west side meeting at Lincoln West High School Tuesday evening. A meeting earlier Tuesday evening was held on the east side at East Tech.
She’s concerned proposed cuts which include transportation, textbooks and preschool will have long term effects.
“Everything on there is so important and an integral part of making the system run efficiently and effectively, as a parent it was very difficult to try to make decisions,” Hills said.
Some two hundred people attended the Lincoln West meeting. They were invited to speak, but also to fill out a survey on three different areas of cuts and to rank each proposed cut as to their importance.
Facing a $13 million deficit, CMSD must have a balanced budget by next week. To balance that budget CEO Eric Gordon said as much as he’d like to not make any cuts, that is not an option.
The recall of laid off teachers to cut class size, along with lower enrollment and fewer state dollars, are also impacting revenue.
Gordon talked of the possibility of putting a levy on one of the upcoming 2012 election dates. The district has not passed an operating levy since 1996. The five-year projections facing the district are awash with red numbers as deficits are projected into 2016.
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article courtesy of Newsnet5.com
