Fayette County school board

members will get their first look at a 2003-2004 operations budget that

is very much "a work in progress" when they convene in a special

called meeting Thursday afternoon.

The 4:30 p.m. workshop, in

School Board chambers at the central administration offices on Stonewall

Avenue, is open to the public and will provide a glimpse at the rough

early draft of an expected $145 million spending plan, about the same

as the 2002-03 budget.

The funding freeze comes as

local schools continue to grow. Fayette will likely enroll another 400

to 500 students, topping the 21,000 mark for the first time next fall.

But it won't be getting the additional 70 to 80 new teachers that come

with that growth in healthier times.

2 new schools

open

Crabapple Lane Elementary will

open in Peachtree City, and Whitewater High is set to welcome its freshman

class at the LaFayette Educational Center in Fayetteville.

So two new schools will open

in August with practically no increase in new personnel systemwide.

Some elementary school classrooms

will go without paraprofessionals, a luxury that's now considered sacred

be owned by the school district they will be leased, saving $1 million.

And that ... may be the worst

of it.

Cuts in fine arts? Isn't going

to happen, Superintendent John DeCotis assures. Ditto for special instructional

programs and valued offerings like Advanced Placement foreign languages.

However, forgive the school

system, he asks, if your child's classroom didn't get a summer paint job.

Or if that water fountain is slightly screwy. Or if the grass out on the

playground is a bit worn.

Tough times call for smart

choices, he says.

A yearlong

job

It has been the job of Fayette

Schools Comptroller Jim Stephens, a five-year veteran of the local budget

process, to come up with so many ingenious ways NOT to spend money.

Of course, when there is no

money to spend, it only makes things more difficult. While property tax

revenues, the primary source of local school funding, are flat, it's really

the statewide budget crisis that hurts most.

Of the Fayette school system's

3,000 employees, more than 500 of them many professionals like aides,

librarians, special education teachers are paid salaries that come completely

from local sources.

Those positions don't exist

in other school districts, Superintendent John DeCotis is proud to point

out. But he can't promise how long Fayette will be able to maintain that

edge, either.

That's why he's lobbying hard

for lawmakers to loosen the tight grip former Gov. Roy Barnes had on local

school spending, especially when connected to student-teacher ratios,

a key component of Barnes' now-maligned education reform efforts of four

years ago.

Next school year was supposed

to be the last of a gradual phase in of lower teacher-student ratios across

the state, DeCotis said. State education officials have required smaller

classroom sizes each of the last three years. And each of those years,

Fayette County did one better lowering the ratio even more and paying

the difference.

And that difference is what's

breaking the local school budget.

In a letter to Rep. Bob Holmes

of Tucker, chairman of the House Education Committee, DeCotis pointed

out the challenges of not allowing flexibility in enforcing policy it's

not enough that a classroom have "around" 18 students per teacher.

It can have no more, period. And if a new student moves in and pushes

that total to 19, the school must establish a full new classroom and hire

to fill a full teaching position.

It's that risk DeCotis is afraid

to take, that every couple of months or immediately after the holiday

break in new classroom teachers will have to be hired to keep ratios down.

"We locally fund 366 teachers

and paraprofessionals," DeCotis wrote to Howard. "Many of these

positions will have to be eliminated."

Fayette

not alone

Even state School Superintendent

Kathy Cox, a former classroom teacher in Fayette County, is fighting to

reverse the hard-line demands of Barnes' policies, firing off letters

to superintendents statewide to gain support for bills that returned spending

decisions involving state funds to the local level.

But like so much this legislative

season, those initiatives have been swallowed up by the much bigger state

budget fight.

This week, as the legislative

term dragged on and on with still no budget, Stephens said he did get

assurance from the local legislative delegation that expected expenditures

through the end of this year.

But there is no way of telling

how much money Fayette will get from the state starting in 2004, he said.

"We're developing a budget

that includes all the things we consider to be realistic to include, and

from there when we get the final money from the state we may have to do

a lot of cutting," Stephens said. "Or maybe we won't."

And time is running out. School

board members will spend the next four to six weeks reviewing the plan

as it is firmed up, and law dictates that it must be adopted by June 30

and activated by July 1.

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