Educators react to recent cutback

INDIANAPOLIS -- School officials had mixed reactions to Gov. Frank O'Bannon's latest round of spending cuts Thursday, unsure whether to breathe a sigh of relief or express frustration at again being a target.\nThe cuts eliminated nearly $35.4 million in grants for K-12 schools -- money that funds programs such as full-day kindergarten, summer school and gifted programs.\nThe cuts also included $12.7 million from the operating budgets of universities and colleges.\nO'Bannon has said the cuts are necessary to help close a projected $1.3 billion budget deficit that lawmakers failed to fix during the legislative session.\n"These cuts will affect as few children as possible, and we will keep them as far away from the classroom as possible," O'Bannon said Thursday.\nSuellen Reed, the state superintendent of schools, said her department would need time to review how the complicated cuts would affect schools. Reed, however, also expressed disappointment that schools again were a target.\n"This is a sad day for us, because many of the cuts that were made are going to be problems for us," Reed said. "This is not good news…particularly when we have been very careful with how we've handled the money. We have been good stewards."\nThe cuts announced Thursday bring the total amount cut from public schools to $193 million, although schools could tap their transportation or capital projects accounts to offset $115 million.\nThe current two-year budget also delays payment of about $280 million for schools into the next budget cycle, beginning in July 2003.\nRoger Thornton, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, said he was relieved that the cuts "are manageable."\n"In the short term, it is survivable," Thornton said. "In the long term, to survive now means the hole is deeper."\nAt least one school official said he believed the cuts, though harmful, likely would not mean major teacher layoffs.\n "This $35 million will be felt by some school districts, but it could have been a lot worse," said Dennis Costerison, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials.\n University officials called the hits to their operating budgets serious and harmful.\n "These additional reductions pose a great challenge to our university as we strive to maintain access and excellence," IU President Myles Brand said in a news release. "They place even greater upward pressure on tuition levels and impede our ability to contribute to the state's economic growth and development efforts."\nBoth IU and Purdue University have seen their budgets slashed by more than $100 million since last summer.\n"This is a serious diminution of our capacity to meet the educational and research needs of Indiana," Jischke said. "This does not bode well for the state's future"