Public schools will open throughout North Texas, and teachers will be there

With the new school year scheduled to begin a week from today, the sense of gloom and financial disaster that hung over local districts for months has largely dissolved into acceptance and a feeling of something akin to "it could have been worse."

That, fortunately, is typical of educators. When it's time to open the school doors, they go to work devotedly and focus on the job to be done.

The Legislature reduced anticipated state aid for schools by $4 billion instead of the feared $8 billion. The federal government freed up millions of dollars to preserve teaching jobs. School administrators scrubbed budgets and found ways to make cuts as far away from the classroom as possible.

Still, teaching jobs were lost by the hundreds. "It could have been worse" is a matter of perspective. Just a couple of years ago, the thought that $4 billion would be cut from per-pupil state spending would have been considered extreme.

Earlier this year, the Fort Worth district anticipated having to cut about 360 employees. Largely due to federal education jobs funding, that number was reduced. About 200 spots for pre-kindergarten teaching assistants, campus monitors, special-education teachers and science lab assistants were saved.

In Arlington, the school funding picture brightened dramatically, although partly due to the financial wizardry of a one-time change in the district's fiscal calendar. The district had anticipated having to eliminate 201 teaching positions but has been able to find the money to keep about 38 of them.

Arlington administrators even expect to be able to maintain or even grow the financial cushion known as "fund balance" in coming years. A wild card in that scenario will be whether trustees decide to grant pay raises.

Tarrant County's third-largest district, Keller, has had a rough summer. In June, voters rejected a proposed 13-cent increase in the property tax rate designed to stave off $16 million in budget cuts. The district already implemented cuts of another $16 million.

There was some good news: When the Legislature finally adopted a state budget in June, Keller's reduction was a lower-than-expected $13 million.

Still, Keller is making deep cuts, including 18 percent of its central administration jobs, 93 positions. Remaining administrators and their support staff will have to take three days of unpaid leave during the school year.

A plan for teacher furloughs has been scrapped, and about 25 teachers will be hired in "high need" areas.

The Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district, small compared to Fort Worth, Arlington and Keller, has eliminated 34 positions by not replacing people who resigned or retired, a savings of $1.9 million.

Depending on how enrollment totals look as the school year gets going, H-E-B might also increase its student-teacher ratio in kindergarten through fourth grade to 23-to-one, up from the current 22-to-one. That's allowed under a law passed by the Legislature this year.

Callie Hearne, H-E-B's assistant superintendent for human resources, said staffing levels will be under review between now and February. Administrators hope any more required reductions can be accomplished through resignations and retirements, Hearne said, but "we're not so certain that we'll be able to do that for the 2012-13 school year."

In fact, the next school year might be more difficult than the 2011-12 year that's about to begin. For one thing, the millions of dollars in federal education jobs money won't be available next year.

Still, the school doors will open, and teachers and administrators will be there to do their jobs -- at least those whose jobs are still there. You have to admire them for that.

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