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School district outlines cuts worth $200,000

SHERRY MAYS

Budget cuts and spending topped the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District meeting Tuesday night as administrators and the board agreed to closely examine spending at district facilities in search of savings.

The district’s “Plan B,” where each school site, the district office and several departments were asked to cumulatively cut $200,000 from budget expenses, was presented in the board packet.

The proposed cuts are as follows:



— District office – $35,000 will be cut in travel/conference budgets and supplies costs across the board. The original amount to be cut was $13,000.

— Maintenance department – $6,100 will be cut in equal portions of the equipment and maintenance budgets.



— Transportation department – $10,000 will be cut by implementing fuel efficiency measures such as using methanol fuel, and by cutting travel and conference expenses.

— Special Education – $11,750 will be cut through supplies, transportation and testing supply budgets.

— Donner Trail Elementary – $1,620 will be cut from the one-time site block grant money that would be passed on to the general fund deficit.

— Glenshire Elementary – $18,080 will be cut by reducing administrative costs, eliminating substitute time, sending home a bimonthly newsletter, eliminating beach day, eliminating travel expenses and book purchasing and cutting supplies through the end of the year by 40 percent.

— Kings Beach Elementary – $14,620 will be cut by passing on the school’s site-block grant funding.

— Rideout Elementary – $6,200 will be cut by passing on the school’s site-block grant funding.

— Tahoe Lake Elementary – $9,660 will be cut by passing on site-block grant funding.

— Truckee Elementary – $25,750 will be cut by passing on the site-block grant funding from 1996-97.

— Sierra Mountain Middle School – $20,460 will be cut by passing on the site-block grant funding and in savings on postage from not mailing newsletters or report cards.

— Tahoe-Truckee High School – $24,340 will be cut using the reimbursement for the use of school facilities by the Calvary Church and Sierra College, and by passing on a portion of the site-block grant funding.

— North Tahoe High School – $14,840 will be cut by passing on a portion of the school’s site-block grant funding, plus cuts in extracurricular stipends and the reserves for athletic supplies and safety related expenses.

— Sierra High School and Cold Stream Alternative – $2,000 and $1,220, respectively, will be cut by passing on the school’s site-block grant funding.

“Looking at these one-page summaries makes this process look easy,” said TTUSD Board Trustee Karen Van Epps. “It took a lot of working together to get to this point. I have to thank everybody who worked on this.”

Superintendent Pat Gemma echoed Van Epps’ sentiments and said these cuts aren’t in stone.

“Stay tuned for an update,” he said. “We are making sure these cuts will have the least impact on our students.”

Van Epps said, “Good things are coming from this (process).”

Of the total $200,000, 75 percent of the cuts were placed on the individual sites.

“The $200,000 was an arbitrary number,” Gemma said. “Site administrators asked if cuts had to be made that they should decide where the cuts would come from.”

He said although the amount was arbitrary, the target was the same – to reduce the district’s costs overall and forge better working relationships by combining efforts.

During the meeting, middle and high school administrators also presented their reports on the sites’ athletic and music budgets.

Other topics discussed included the Memorandum of Understanding with the Prosser Creek Charter School, the capacity to house Truckee students, the intradistrict transfer policy and the revised language arts standards.

Sierra Sun E-mail: sun@tahoe.com

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