Denair school office staff's pay cut

Denair trustees extended a management pay cut to district office support staff and accepted an administrator's resignation Thursday night.

The Denair Unified School District board accepted the resignation of Associate Superintendent Karla Paul, whose duties included managing the district's special-education services and running the Denair Charter Academy, which primarily serves students at risk of not graduating. Paul is leaving for a special-education position in Ceres Unified.

Trustees voted unanimously to give four furlough days to confidential classified employees, a 3.5 percent cut in pay for the five management workers. The move will save an estimated $6,184 for the district this school year, bringing savings approved for 2012-13 to about $43,000.

The board will meet next on Feb. 14 and will discuss policies on intradistrict transfers. The district loses more than 100 students each year to nearby Turlock schools.

Denair Unified has a tentative deal pending with the rest of its support staff for the same furlough days, a 3.5 percent pay cut, for 2012-13, said Kyle Harvey, negotiator for the California School Employees Association Denair Chapter.

Harvey said his members have not had seniority raises since 2009 and held off on a 4 percent raise negotiated in 2008. The CSEA tentatively agreed to an additional cut, he said, contingent on all bargaining units taking the same reduction. Union members will vote on accepting the pact Feb. 5.

Teachers have not accepted the cut, said Denair Unified Teachers Association President Barry Cole. "We have met twice with the district negotiating team, but there is not progress to report. They offered, we counteroffered, and we will meet again on Feb. 11," he said.

Each 1 percent salary cut taken by all employees would save the district about $100,000.

"DUTA stance has always been that since salaries — all district salaries and not just teacher salaries — didn't cause the problem, cutting them won't fix the problem," he said.

Management salary cuts and staff layoffs for next year, approved at previous meetings, will amount to roughly $1 million, by district estimates. But the total still falls short of the approximately $1.4 million Denair will need to cut from the next 18 months to avoid a state takeover of the district.

The district's reserves, required to be at least 4 percent of its budget, fell to 0.54 percent this fall, according to budget filings submitted to the state. Denair dipped into savings for years to avoid layoffs despite losing nearly 30 percent of its enrollment over the same period.

Don Gatti, who oversees district budgets for the Stanislaus County Office of Education, said Thursday he's "cautiously optimistic" that Denair will be able to make the necessary cuts. "Denair's board has been very solid," he said, in reacting to the fiscal crisis.

Bee education reporter Nan Austin can be reached at naustin@modbee.com or (209) 578-2339, and on Twitter, @NanAustin.