To hear school officials in Orange County tell the story, the cuts they’re facing are terrible. But check out this Chapel Hill News story about potential cuts facing the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. Is this really so bad? I say no. Here’s what they’re looking at:
PROPOSED CUTS
The school district’s $2.5 million reduction plan includes:
• a $39,267 cut for professional development programs
• cutting $25,000 in signing bonuses offered to teachers in hard-to-fill positions
• eliminating the equivalent of one full-time elementary teaching position and increasing class sizes, saving $68,871
• eliminating the equivalent of six high school teaching positions and increasing class sizes, saving $413,226
• allocating only one art and one music teacher to each school, saving $206,343
• requiring middle-school core teachers to teach five periods instead of four, saving $550,248
• eliminating kindergarten world language instruction, saving $206,613
• reducing the number of elementary gifted-education specialists from 1.5 to 1 per school, saving $206,613
