80 jobs cut from county schools | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

Eighty jobs - none of them teaching positions - were eliminated last week while the schools brace for another year without new science labs, kindergarten classrooms, playground equipment and other things officials said they badly need.

"It is severely going to impact how we help the media specialists and the children," said Linda Williams, head of the library department, which is losing 11 of 21 employees. "I'm still overwhelmed by all of this."

Among other duties, Ms. Williams' department reviews, buys and distributes books and videos and coaches school librarians in teaching students how to do research. There are ways she can run her department differently, but after streamlining to cope with losing two employees a few months ago, she doesn't know how she'll get all her work done after losing 11 more.

"The schools are already understaffed; the media specialists have to teach, the secretaries are overloaded," she said. "Who is going to do it?"

The 11 positions cut from the libraries office were among 18 eliminated from the whole business and management department.

Thirty-six were cut from curriculum and instruction planning, 14 from facilities planning and construction, eight from information technology and four from strategic initiatives, said Bob Mosier, a county schools spokesman.

The 80 positions were cut because the schools' operating budget landed at $931 million last week, shy of the $968 million officials wanted for fiscal 2009. The Board of Education approved the County Council's version of that budget last week with just minor adjustments.

On the capital side, $50 million worth of school renovation and construction projects won't be done this year. School officials wanted $189 million for such maintenance, but received $139 million.

For example, the schools also didn't get $4 million officials wanted to renovate high school science labs, some of which still have fixtures and equipment from the 1950s, said Alex Szachnowicz, chief facilities officer for county schools. Southern, Severna Park and Broadneck high schools would have been next in line for those renovations.

"It's like a time warp, and the students are at a disadvantage," Mr. Szachnowicz said. "We want to ensure that every student has an equal opportunity to be successful, to step right up the lawn of the University of Maryland, College Park chemistry lab or physics lab and hit the ground running."

Nor did schools get the $10 million officials wanted to build classroom additions for all-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten classes. The state began requiring schools to switch from half-day to all-day kindergarten last year, and the move created a space crunch in many elementary schools. Portable classrooms were used last year, but they were supposed to be a temporary fix until permanent classrooms could be built.

Schools also didn't get the money to replace auditorium seating at Glen Burnie or Broadneck high schools or add $300,000 of playground equipment to elementary schools as they had planned.

Nor did they get the $2 million they wanted for installing extra lighting and bathrooms at the turf fields all county high schools are slated to receive in the next few years. Those improvements would have maximized the use of those fields, allowing sports teams to use them for day-long tournaments and night games, Mr. Szachnowicz said.

And schools only will be able to replace three of their aging school buses instead of five, and put walls in the classrooms of three open-space elementary schools instead of six.

School officials, including board members and Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell, have loudly extolled the efforts of councilmen who took money from elsewhere in the county budget - like the public library system - to find more money for schools.

Their efforts funded the start of renovations at six schools and prevented a cut to 150 teaching positions Dr. Maxwell announced in the spring.

"We cut and reorganized funding as best we could to meet our biggest priorities," said Councilman Josh Cohen, D-Annapolis. "But the fact is in our current economic climate, there aren't the funds to do everything we want."

And the same problem is likely going to reappear in next year's county budget, Mr. Szachnowicz said.

"I think we'll continue to be frustrated until we're willing to have those broader based discussions about what we want for our youngsters and what we're willing to pay for," he said. "That disconnect between what we want and what we're willing to fund exists, and it's not going away."