Video Transcript:

GLORIA PENNER (Host): School districts have been hard-hit by the state budget crisis. This week, the San Diego Unified School District struggled as it continued to try to find more than a $100 million in cuts from its $1.1 billion budget. And here now is School Board President Sheila Jackson on the record.

SHEILA JACKSON (School Board President): We didn't close schools, we didn't layoff teachers, which are two things that you hear a lot of other districts doing. The main reason we didn't do that, we wanted the public to know that when school starts in September, we're going to be there. Their neighborhood school is going to be there. Now, what this doesn't mean is that we're not going to continue to look for cuts. So that means that some of these programs that we didn't eliminate, we will not go back and trim them a little bit. So you might not have as much money in your athletics department or music department or other departments. We might not close a school, but we might add something else to that -- the district department that will save money in the long run.

PENNER: Well as you just heard, the board did not close schools or layoff teachers. Education reporter Ana Tintocalis is here to tell us what the board did cut to trim millions from its budget. So Ana, where did the board find the savings?

ANA TINTOCALIS (Reporter): Well, the majority of the savings can be found in increasing class sizes. When you crunch the numbers it turns out to be more than $20 million that they're saving with that. And when I talk about increasing class sizes, the key class sizes were in the youngest grades. We're talking kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, and then ninth grade which is considered a pivotal grade because junior high school students are transitioning into high school. They really cherish those small learning environments, but ninth grade class sizes will also go up. So that was kind of the biggest bang for the district's buck was found in class sizes.

PENNER: So how much money did they actually, were they able to save or cut?

TINTOCALIS: In the end, after considering a bunch of other options like lunch prices will go up, in addition to that there's going to be a lot of bussing changes. Kids will have to walk farther to catch the bus because many school busses will be eliminated and there'll be longer bus rides in addition to that. So including all those costs and some cuts that were made several weeks ago, the district now has about clost to $100 million that they've cut. They need to find two to three more million dollars in the coming weeks.

PENNER: Doesn't seem like very much, there was a time they were talking about school closures, they were talking about cutting arts programs ans athletics. How did they manage to avoid all that?

TINTOCALIS: It was a pretty dire situation on the onset. Like you were saying you were hearing a lot of doom and gloom. They were able to -- the numbers changed. About a week ago we were looking at about a $180 million budget deficit. That came down to $106 million. And the way that happened was the district took a better accounting of their finances. Instead of relying on projections they actually took a look at each districts' budget book, which is kind of like their own little spending plan. They took a look at the actual numbers, analyzed those numbers. They got some good news from the federal economic stimulus money, a little bit more money than expected. In addition to that the district froze a lot of expenses. So all of that equated to about $70 million less than they were anticipating. 

PENNER: So there must have been a big sigh of relief when they realized that they weren't going to have to do any draconian cuts, but I noticed that tenured teachers aren't going to get layoffs. What about the teachers who have fewer years and are not yet tenured?

TINTOCALIS: Well, they haven't gone to layoff decisions yet and they feel its because they're going to be able to handle this budget deficit. The district is still in negotiations with the teachers union to figure out cuts to pay in benefits, but at this point in time they're not talking layoffs. And I think part of that is the district entered into an early retirement plan for those veteran teachers so more than 600 teachers will be leaving. School employees have also taken that early retirment plan so you'll see a lot of folks just voluntarily leaving the district. That comes up with more than $11 million in savings. And on top of that you have a lot of temporary teachers whose contracts are already up, so that kind of personnel cost is making the district look at layoffs and say "well, we don't necessarily have to go that route yet."

PENNER: Well the story isn't over, we'll be following it with you. Thank you Ana Tintocalis.

TINTOCALIS: Thank you.