Hillsborough School Jobs, Buses Vulnerable To Cuts

TAMPA - As the state economy continues to spiral downward, Hillsborough County school officials are looking at revising who rides buses and where they get on and off, raising the price of sports tickets and replacing some teachers with lower-paid staff.

Last year's cost cutting - including adding an extra class period to high school teachers' schedules - will get the district through this school year, said Superintendent MaryEllen Elia. The state budget for 2008-09 is still up in the air, however, and each estimate is "looking worse," Elia told school board members during a workshop meeting Tuesday

Elia did not rule out layoffs, but said that even when positions are cut, jobs are always available, although not always at the same pay. The district is the county's largest employer with 27,000 jobs.

Sprinkled with phrases such as "doing more with less," "think outside the box" and "cut overhead" the board reviewed possible options for the 2008-09 school year. They include:

•Put more students in non-core classes not covered by the state class-size amendment.

•Review nursing services, although the district has about 80 fewer nursing and health assistant positions now than it did several years ago.

•Review guidance services, including student intervention and career specialist positions, previously paid for with grants.

•Replace in-school suspension teachers with assistant teachers or use teachers who need more classes to fill in.

•Hire assistant teachers, people with two-year degrees or college students to fill technology specialist jobs now held by teachers.

•Review middle and high school athletics, including ticket prices and allowing only varsity teams to travel out of county.

Few details were fleshed out on any of the suggestions, but some may yield little or, as board member Doretha Edgecomb warned, may have some "unintended consequences."

Raising ticket prices is an option, for example, but could have an effect on gate receipts, Athletic Director Lanness Robinson said when contacted later.

"We don't want to prevent our families from being able to go to contests," he said. As to saving out-of-county travel for junior varsity, "They go on the same bus as the varsity team," he said.

Board Expects Complaints

Expected to create a stir with parents and private day care providers are proposed transportation changes designed to increase efficiency and safety. By streamlining pickups and eliminating courtesy riders, the plan would save fuel and decrease the number of late buses, said John Franklin, the district's transportation chief.

The plan also would increase safety, because bus drivers would be more familiar with their students, fewer students should be left at the wrong stops and the district would have a better record of who should be on the buses.

"You're going to get phone calls," Jack Davis, the district's chief information and technology officer, told the board.

Some Changes Criticized

One change - only allowing middle and high school students with divorced parents and split custody to alternate bus stops if both parents live in the same boundary and a court order is produced - has been tried since the fall. Thirty-five families took advantage but would have to re-apply next year, Franklin said.

"You're requiring parents who don't like each other to live near each other," board chairwoman Jennifer Faliero told him.

Faliero also had a problem with another proposal: Not allowing parents to call a school and have their child take a bus home with another student except in an emergency.

What if she were at a board meeting and called her daughter's school to have her ride home with someone else, Faliero asked, "Are you going to tell me I can't put my daughter on the bus? I don't like that."

Elia said the district will gather data from the current year on the number of such requests received and calculate the time it takes to process them.

Many of the suggestions came from consultants the district hired to fix an ailing transportation system with chronically late buses. The district remains low on drivers, has no substitutes and about 100 drivers are absent every day, Franklin said.

In another matter, the board was told that it needs to develop a plan to fill top school jobs. Within 10 years, 65 percent of the district's administrators - including principals and assistant principals - will be eligible for retirement.