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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) – With sweeping budget cuts looming in the state of Texas, school districts are in a dire situation.
The state contributes $25 billion to public schools, but House Bill 1 intends to cut that by about $9.5 billion, leaving school districts looking at drastic changes.
Fort Worth trustees are worried about how the state’s budget cuts will impact their district. Layoffs, though, seem inevitable.
Any way it’s added up, the budget problems will soon equal a grave situation for Fort Worth ISD.
“Yeah, we’re between a rock and a hard place,” said spokesman Clint Bond.
The district is already functioning with a $30 million deficit this year and 85 percent of its $600 million budget is used for salaries, which means job cuts seem unavoidable. The school board will start a series of budget workshops Tuesday.
“The reduction in personnel will be a reality at some point but we don’t know to what extent,” Bond said. “We anticipate a cut from the state for us between 10 and 15 percent so that could be as little as 60 million to as much as 80 to 85 million, depending what happens.”
Sen. Wendy Davis (D – Fort Worth) has proposed a bill that could at least lessen the blow, by giving public schools a 20 percent discount on basic utilities, the same discount already passed on to public universities.
“We cannot look at our school districts and say ‘we’re going to put you in this type of a financial crisis,” said State Senator Wendy Davis, of Fort Worth. “In Fort Worth ISD that would be about $3 million in savings per year. That’s a lot of teachers.”
Regardless, trustees are still facing a mathematical nightmare with no easy solution.
“Quality has to suffer when you start cutting personnel, especially teachers,” said Dave Robinson, past president of the Fort Worth Education Association. “There’s not a lot of fat in this budget to cut, at least not as far as personnel are concerned, in my opinion there are programs that need to go before you start cutting people.”
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