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Whitewater sets hearing for schools cuts

WHITEWATER — Residents can respond Thursday to the Whitewater School Board’s plan to cut more than half a million dollars from the 2011-12 budget.

The reductions include a proposal to drop the high school boys tennis and girls golf programs to save $6,000.

School board members last week recommended a public hearing to give the community a chance to respond to the district’s spending plan. The recommendations include 19 cuts totaling $525,515.

Some of the most significant proposals and the resulting savings are:

-- Physical education staff restructuring: $90,000.

-- A 5 percent reduction of all building and central office budgets: $36,000.

-- Elimination of the Washington Elementary “bubble teacher” in fifth grade and creation of a Lakeview Elementary multi-age classroom for first- and second-graders: $75,000.

Board member Daniel McCrea asked the board during a May 16 meeting to consider a hearing to allow parents and students the opportunity to comment. The board was prepared that night to consider approving the reductions.

The Whitewater School District isn’t unique in its fiscal difficulties, though it’s among few school districts in the area that didn’t initiate layoffs last year, District Administrator Suzanne Zentner said during a public forum this month.

“We expect going into next year we’re going to feel the impact of (the state budget) to some degree,” she told about 100 community members during the May 4 forum. “Certainly, going forward, we’re really going to have to work together to find some solutions.”

Smaller reductions in the board’s proposal include restructuring of the 4-year-old kindergarten and Head Start programs as well as buildings and grounds spending.

The board plans next year to go back to referendum to increase the school tax over the state cap. Since 2006, the district exceeded that cap by $49 per $100,000 of assessed property value, but that expired this year without an extension.

A referendum asking for a continuance was expected to appear on ballots last fall, but the board put that plan on hold when it received $617,000 from the federal government through the education jobs bill.