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Dist. 220 OKs plan to trim $2.4 million

After more than a month of wrestling with new financial pressures, Barrington Unit District 220 board members Tuesday unanimously agreed to cut $2.4 million from next year's budget.

Although each year's budget is formally adopted in September, one of the practical reasons for planning so far ahead is that teachers whose contracts won't be renewed for the fall must be notified by mid-March.

"If we're going to be releasing staff, we believe we need to tell them," Superintendent Tom Leonard said. "It's the right thing to do."

With the cuts envisioned, as well as a few new positions being created, the net loss to next year's certified staff is about 12 full-time employees.

Administrators and board members have emphasized that because of retirements and teachers seeking employment elsewhere, it's still too early to know exactly how many layoffs will be necessary to drop 12 positions.

Board Member Nicholas Sauer joined a few of his colleagues in praising the efforts of administrators to find a plan which minimized the pain necessitated by an unfortunate economic reality.

But he threw the same challenge to the district's teachers union to revisit its recently negotiated contract in some creative way to help save what teachers may be imperiled by the cuts.

The district plans to hold back $1 million of the $3 million usually spent on summer maintenance among its 12 schools.

The remaining $1.4 million of the cuts come from personnel and program reductions which board members said are intended to cause as little change as possible to students' classroom experience.

However, average class sizes will creep up at all grade levels to the student-teacher ratios of about three years ago.

The cuts make some changes to the number of coaches and faculty advisers for extracurricular activities. With an eye toward cutting fewer teaching jobs, administrators looked into reducing more of these coaching positions but found their current numbers to be very close to those of neighboring districts.

On March 16, Leonard will present the board with a list of names to consider putting on notice for end-of-year layoffs.