School job cuts possible in Lynn

LYNN – While the School Department has managed to avoid teacher layoffs when slimming down the fiscal 2008 budget in recent months, the same cannot be said for fiscal 2009 as a projected $8 million school budget “problem” is expected to cost some teachers and administrative staff their jobs this summer.Rising costs of energy, pensions and insurance combined with a weak revenue stream have made for a gloomy outlook heading into the 2009 budget season, and Mayor Edward J. Clancy Jr. and Superintendent Nicholas Kostan are warning that jobs are on the line if something drastic does not happen soon.Clancy is quick to point out, however, that the $8 million the department will be short this spring is not a deficit, as the city has paid all of its bills and balanced the books in 2008.”This is not a deficit, all of our bills are paid. There are no icebergs waiting for us,” Clancy said. “We simply do not have the ability to raise enough revenue (in 2009) to continue to provide municipal services at the same level. If you have to cut $8 million out of the budget, a substantial amount of that has to be personnel. It is nothing particular about the schools – all municipal government will face this.”More than half of that $8 million, $4.1 million, is earmarked for contractual teacher raises, along with another $2 million for health insurance, $1.2 million for charter schools and $700,000 in sick day buybacks from retiring teachers.Clancy says cutting jobs to support these necessary expenses is not a step that he enjoys taking, but it is the only way to protect against future financial problems in the city.”I hope I’m wrong. I think we are all hoping that the Governor and the legislature can craft some changes that will bring us some relief,” he said. “There is nothing more difficult than negotiating a budget where you are going to end up hurting people. I can sit there and yes people to death, but I just don’t see where the revenue is going to come from to give us that additional assistance.”With just one day to digest Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposed 2009 budget, Kostan said it is much too early to speculate how many jobs would be cut, but he did indicate that layoffs would come from all branches of the School Department, not just teachers.”Certainly if the budget problem is at the magnitude we have anticipated, there will probably have to be teacher and staff layoffs,” he said. “We won’t know the degree of it until the state budget passes through the House and the Senate, and we have a better idea of what we are going to get. But in all likelihood there will have to be some layoffs in all areas of staffing, both teachers and administrators.”The $17.6 million in Chapter 70 school aid that Patrick proposed in his budget Wednesday would certainly help save some of the positions headed for the chopping block if approved by the Legislature, but would still leave the district approximately $2 million short in 2009.Clancy says looking closer at the Governor’s proposal would suggest that Patrick is playing with “Monopoly money,” and his unrealistic goals would not bode well for that Chapter 70 increase.He pointed to the proposed $124 million in casino licensing revenue, $297 million in corporate tax changes, $166 million in tobacco and delinquent tax enforcement and $151 million saved through Medicaid changes as examples of Patrick’s wishful thinking when drafting his budget, and said he does not have much confidence in seeing those numbers become a reality.”All of that money that he is basing the bulk of this budget on is deceitful, it really is,” he said. “In my world, I would rather deal with the problems during the budget process than enact phony pieces that will come back to bite you.”