“Teachers are reporting increased participation and attention from students and a dramatic increase in endurance,” said principal Nikki Westfall. “Our families are happier too. They are reporting much less stressful mornings.”

The in-class breakfast model is not new to the state, or even the metro area, but Colorado is trying to expand it through the No Kid Hungry campaign, which includes an awards program for schools that serve breakfast to more kids.

At Clayton, breakfast participation in 2011 reached about 90 percent of students, with an average of 405 breakfasts served daily, up from about 91 breakfasts served per day in April 2010.

That increase earned the school a Gold award in the Colorado School Breakfast Challenge.

The award, which came with a $5,000 gift, was presented by Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia on Tuesday.

Besides knowing more kids have had breakfast, and using anecdotal data to monitor classroom behaviors, Clayton officials compared data from August through December in 2010 and 2011 and found that student tardies dropped by 15 percent. Discipline referrals dropped by 50 percent.

Officials working throughout the state as consultants to help schools find grants and change their breakfast programs have noticed similar results.

“When schools move to a universal breakfast program, we have seen it removes the stigmas associated with eating breakfast. School nurse visits and behavioral problems drop,” said Kathy Underhill, executive director of Hunger Free Colorado, one of the organizations supporting the No Kid Hungry project.

Underhill said programs also are trying to serve healthier foods.

At Clayton, kids get a piece of fruit, a carton of milk and an entree such as a nutrition bar or cereal bar.

Westfall said she plans to use the award money to develop health-and-wellness classes that can be tied to the breakfast program. Some of the funds will also be used to purchase additional insulated food bags and carts so that when the school expands by a grade level next year, those kids could also eat breakfast in class.

The program’s startup cost came from about $6,000 in grants, a sum managers say is an investment that pays off in real dollars and in student outcomes.

“I’m a big believer that if we’re serious about ed reform, we will have to look at making sure children are fed,” Underhill said. “It’s not an either/or. If you have not eaten, your mind is not there in the classroom.”

Yesenia Robles

It’s confusing. Kind like all the conflicting studies about coffee – or red wine. (I know how I choose to interpret them…)

Does healthy school food make a difference? Or doesn’t it?

Should we just keep healthy food on the lunch tray (read all about the Obama administration’s changes to subsidized school meals announced this week) and not worry about vending machines?

These are potentially costly tweaks to our state’s cafeteria and vending machine food to make at a time when there are so many other competing needs in our classrooms.

My daughter, a fourth-grader in a Boulder Valley school, won’t touch the food at school, even though our very own “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper has transformed the nutritional quality of lunches in our school district.

Still, a sizable number of children do eat food at school. And despite the image of Colorado as a fitness paradise, 14.2 percent of our children and adolescents are technically obese, meaning they have a much higher risk for a range of diseases that will shorten their lives.

For some of our children, school provides a primary source of nourishment each day.

Why school food matters

The food our children eat – or even simply look at – at school does have an impact.

Face it. School isn’t just about academics – it’s about helping young people make good choices. Recycling is good. Tossing trash in the street is bad. Smoking is really nasty. Not smoking equates to nice, healthy pink lungs. Being respectful to others is good. Being a bully gets you sent to the principal. You get the drift.

With all the research now in hand, it’s hard to argue that Coca Cola or French fries have any place at school. And, in many cases, Colorado schools have already banished these nutritionally negligent foods.

Whether we need a new state law to limit trans fats, including foods made with margarine or vegetable shortening, should be debated. In light of the new, watered down school food guidelines announced this week, Colorado should step up to do more.

You may recall that Congress – bowing to industry pressure – failed to approve the revised school food rules as they were originally drafted. The original revisions would have limited the amount of potatoes consumed in school lunch (Tater Tots, anyone?) and not counted tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable. As it stands, kids in some districts will still be able to mack down on Fries at every meal. Yet a key question remains: Who will be the designated trans fat cop? If food cooked with margarine is discovered, does the school cook get time in French fry jail?

Regardless of what happens on the federal or state level, schools and districts should embrace these changes on their own, working closely with parents and students in their own communities.

Kids are shaped by what they see. Isn’t it better that they see popcorn, granola bars or fruit in a vending machine vs. potato chips and candy?

The evidence is certainly clear. The consumption of trans fats increases the risk of coronary heart disease by raising levels of LDL cholesterol and lowering levels of “good” HDL cholesterol. We don’t want that for our kids.

Why we can ignore the Penn State study

So, I don’t choose to give that much weight to a recent Penn State study, which found that the percentage of children who had access to candy, soda and chips at school jumped dramatically between fifth and eighth grades yet didn’t translate into extra pounds.

Interestingly, the New York Daily News reported that the percentage of students in the survey who were overweight or obese actually declined between fifth and eighth grades.

The surprised researcher concluded that how kids eat outside and at home has a much greater impact than their exposure to high-fat or sugary snacks in school.

This, of course, makes total sense. But are we better off reinforcing unhealthy eating habits at school, or showing young people there are different – and better – ways to eat?

I’ll argue the latter.

Find more news and information on healthy schools in Colorado and beyond here.

EdNews Parent editor Julie Poppen is a former daily newspaper journalist who has covered a multitude of school issues in Fort Collins, Boulder and Denver. She is also the mother of a fourth grader in Boulder Valley and regular, though not always perfectly proficient, classroom volunteer. Read her weekly blog Confessions of a Partially Proficient Parent.

This left such an impact on me that I am now involved in my daughters’ school.

Like my mom, I am active, but work to give my children space to be themselves and find their own place without their mother hovering. Unlike my mom, I work outside the home. Also unlike my mom, I do not participate in the PTA directly, but help out in other capacities.

I help in the classroom, fill Friday folders, act as room parent, organize the science fair and sit on the school improvement committee. I also ran a science club last fall.

After that list, I’m wondering if I am giving them space, or enough of my undivided attention.

I started asking myself this question last fall when I took on the science club. Last summer, when the PTA asked me if I would run an after school club. I jumped at the opportunity. I hoped the club would get kids excited about science, bring a little enrichment to the school and give me a chance to play with some of my favorite things.

Dreaming of running a science club and actually planning, prepping, organizing and running a science club are two different things. It took up so much of my time, we barely pulled our own family Halloween prepping together in time. Decorations came out barely a week before, costumes were pulled together at the last minute. We didn’t make it to our traditional family outings.

I was also planning a classroom Halloween party during this time. I was so distracted and crazy I had a hard time focusing on our family’s priorities.

In the months since, I question whether or not my volunteering is making a difference in my children’s lives. I hope I am making at least a small difference within the school and contributing to make it a great school that offers an exceptional education. I also hope I am supporting the teachers where they need it.

Every meeting I attend takes me away from home, however, this gives my kids one on one time with their dad or grandparents or extra play dates.

Every event I plan takes me away from a focused approach on homework. I struggle to keep up with due dates, projects and daily homework. I feel like I am doing my young daughters a disservice by not always being on top of their lives and schedules. Is this helping to teach them independence and self reliance or causing issues because I am not there to teach them how to be independent and self reliant?

The PTA asked me to run a science fair club this spring. I would help guide kids and their parents through projects in hopes of engaging a few more children and increasing science fair participation. I jumped at the opportunity.

Then I respectfully declined.

It was a tough decision…I had the opportunity to get children engaged and improve our science fair. But I wondered if I would have enough time and energy to help my own children complete their projects. I am suffering from immense guilt from turning down the science fair club, but am happy that my children will have my undivided attention.

I will continue on with my commitments and volunteering but will stay vigilant to keeping a balance.

Do you volunteer at your child’s school? How do you find a balance?

“I would always hope they were the iPads,” she says.

And finally, they arrived — a wave of tablet devices that, combined with other Apple technology, created a schoolwide learning system based largely on the second-generation iPad2.

“The first day we could bring them home, I was up all night,” recalls Kaitlyn. “I learned so many things, it really shocked me.”

Well into a first, full year of experimentation, many educators also describe a steep learning curve with their introduction to the popular touch-screen tablet. Students use the $600 devices to read novels, shoot videos, conduct research, hone their writing skills and bring new enthusiasm to once-tedious drills on educational basics.

Legacy even credits the new technology for an increase in enrollment.

But the iPad and its growing array of applications remain in their infancy — the device was introduced only two years ago — and it has no significant track record as an educational tool. Some schools are testing iPads alongside PC-based technology to see whether there’s an appreciable difference, or whether the buzz is mostly marketing hype.

But some Colorado educators already note a change in classroom culture, whether by employing the devices piecemeal or all-out on a one-to-one, take-home basis.

“We’re having tremendous success — not without pitfalls — but it’s been a wonderful adventure,” says Jason Cross, principal of Legacy Academy, a K-8 charter that issued an iPad to each student. “We’re finding new things we can do with the technology every single day.”

Teachers are moving ahead by trial and error and by experimenting with various apps. Legacy has loaded anywhere from 80 to 130 on its machines. And months after the tablets’ introduction, students still see them as shiny objects that, not incidentally, bring a new dimension to academia.

“I know it’s working, because when I go into classrooms and look at learning, I see a higher level of engagement than I’ve ever seen as a teacher or administrator,” says Manitou Springs Middle School principal Chris Burr, whose district is phasing in the devices. “They’re more willing to write, to share, to critically think, to create.”

Still, students have had to learn to think of the iPads primarily as a learning tool, not a toy. Teachers and administrators have developed new strategies to deal with some apps’ inherent distractions. And, perhaps most significantly, the use of iPads as a take-home device has raised questions about Internet safety: Who’s responsible for a student’s online behavior once they leave school?

Legacy’s choice to fully embrace iPads was part of its larger decision last spring to go all-Apple and earn designation as the state’s only iSchool.

In the midst of budget cuts, the school found financing for the technology makeover from Apple and so far doesn’t charge parents any additional fee. Enrollment has grown from fewer than 300 — and on the decline — to 448, providing a significant per-pupil funding boost.

The school, which subscribes to Core Knowledge principles, has added technology to the mix by integrating basic computer code concepts as early as kindergarten, where students learn if-then conditional statements.

“By the time they’re hitting middle school, we want to see them write basic software code,” Cross says. “We want to make computer science part of our core curriculum.”

And like other educators, Cross looks at the iPad technology as a way to differentiate instruction — to help students learn at their own pace and “break away from the assembly-line model.”

In Pam Landrum’s third-grade math class, student Nathaniel Dahlen plows through 100 timed, single-digit addition problems on his touch screen. The application has a race car motif, adding a sense of urgency — and fun — to the exercise.

But other students are doing subtraction, or multiplication or division — working on whatever they need at their own pace. They e-mail their results to Landrum, who charts their progress.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard them say, ‘Oh, darn, we’ve got to do math drills,’ ” she says.

Wall-to-wall technology finds kids creating videos in the hallway, working on blogs in the classroom and — as a reward for outstanding work — playing some games like the popular Angry Birds.

Technology even attaches itself to the walls: Next to a painting of George Washington in the school’s entry, a small square displays a variation of a bar code that students scan with their iPads to conjure a website full of information.

“The focus still needs to be on instruction,” Cross says. “Core Knowledge drives the end results. Planning doesn’t go away. But now we have tools that we never had before.”

Denver’s Grant Beacon Middle School won a grant to purchase 150 iPads that stay in eighth-grade core curriculum classrooms with a two-fold purpose: to introduce new ways of doing things and to free up existing computers for younger students at a school short on technology.

Language arts teacher Jacob Benezra, who helped write the grant that brought the iPads to his school, warms up his students with a couple of quick games of “Hangman Genius.” The animated app prompts kids to determine which letters fill in the blanks to spell words that appear with high frequency on the SAT exam.

Julie Rivera-Macias, 13, figures out “imperceptible” before her cartoon character swings from the gallows. She touches the word on her screen and the definition appears. The class picks up two new vocabulary words each day this way, and Benezra has them incorporate the new terms into the week’s writing exercises.

And by the way, class attendance is up since the introduction of iPads.

“Coincidence or causality? I’m not sure,” Benezra says. “But there’s a lot of energy surrounding them.”

Principal Alex Magaña, who estimates that less than half of his students have access to this kind of technology at home, figures that his teachers still need time to figure out which applications work. He hopes that in the next two months, students will be able to carry the iPad with them the entire school day, so they can store notes and other work right on the device, instead of checking out a different one in each class.

“It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary,” he says. “All the kids are actively engaged. If we want to level that playing field, we’ve got to get them the technology.”

In Manitou Springs School District 14, administrators ordered 600 iPads — one for each student in grades five through eight plus a few classroom sets for the high school, which probably will get more tablets next year.

Lisette Casey, the technology integration specialist, heard rumblings that middle-schoolers would be too hard on the devices and that they’d be an easy target for thieves. But she says fewer than 20 have cracked and none have been stolen — a loss rate about half of what other similar programs had experienced. Students buy into a $50 insurance plan to cover damage.

Still, the district had concerns. Fears that with access to the Internet, kids might engage in more cyberbullying proved unfounded, and behavior in general was better than expected. Attendant distractions from tools such as e-mail or YouTube or Angry Birds did surface — particularly with e-mail.

Teachers regrouped and addressed the distractions by reinforcing strategies to keep students engaged with the academic uses of the tablets.

“I think that was a little bit of a growing pain,” Casey says. “But as teachers grow accustomed to using the iPads, it doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of conversations.”

Among the most striking shifts has been the way certain applications have allowed students who struggle with putting thoughts down on paper to become surprisingly productive. In particular, voice-to-text apps have allowed kids with learning disabilities or even physical disabilities to take that first step of getting ideas into written form.

“They still have to go in and edit the text, organize it and look at word choice,” Casey says. “But just the ability to do that on a device easily and quickly allows everybody to be these writers you didn’t think they were.”

Kevin Simpson

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Home use grows

Tablets and e-readers were popular holiday gifts, so much so that the number of people who own them nearly doubled between mid-December and January, a study finds. A report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, released Monday, found that 29 percent of Americans owned at least one tablet or e-reader as of the beginning of this month. That’s up from 18 percent in December. The percentage of people who own a tablet jumped to 19 from 10 between mid-December and early January.

The Associated Press

She’s a first-generation high school student. English is her second language. And she’s a mom.

But she’s not making excuses.

This May, she will graduate on time — with honors. In the fall, she’ll enroll at the University of Denver with the hope of becoming a physician’s assistant.

“I’m going to open doors for myself, my son and my younger siblings,” said Molinar, a gregarious 17-year-old who credits an array of advisers, teachers and school programs for leading her to those doors.

And it’s why Lincoln, which increased its graduation rate by about 12 percentage points to 63.5 percent in 2011, was the backdrop Friday as Denver Public Schools touted significant gains in on-time graduation rates last year.

“Our absolute commitment is that every student in DPS, regardless of where they live, what language they speak . . . that every student will wear that cap and gown and cross the graduation stage,” said DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg.

Denver School of the Arts recorded the highest graduation rate at 97.5 percent; West High School had the lowest at 53 percent.

By the most basic bottom-line measure, the district outperformed the statewide average for growth rates. But even with the growth at DPS, its overall graduation levels still lag far behind the statewide average, according to data released by the Colorado Department of Education.

DPS rates increased by 4.3 percentage points — to 56.1 percent — whereas the statewide average increased 1.5 points to 73.9 percent.

The data compare on-time graduation rates between the school years 2009-10 and 2010-11.

Beginning in 2009-10, Colorado changed the method it used to calculate graduation rates. Unlike previous years — where students who took longer than four years to graduate were factored into the calculations — the rates are now based on a formula that defines “on time” as only students who graduate from high school four years after entering ninth grade.

Among the larger districts, Greeley-Evans School District 6 saw a 7.6 percentage-point gain in its graduation rate, bringing it to 71.8 percent. Graduation at Adams 12 Five Star Schools increased by 3.6 percentage points to 65.3 percent from 61.7 percent.

But all districts did not see increases.

For example, the Charter School Institute — based out of Denver — saw drastic declines in on-time graduation rates. In 2010, 46 percent of its students graduated on time, yet in 2011, that number decreased to 34.3 percent.

Interim executive director Ethan Hemming said a school closure and two new online high schools that focus on over-age, under-credited students less likely to graduate in four years are to blame for the drop.

“We take seriously graduation rates, but at the same time, we work with each school to set relevant goals and monitor their progress,” Hemming said.

At Lincoln, programs such as the Freshmen Academy, which houses ninth-graders away from the rest of the school and allows teachers to build and foster relationships with students, have helped to bolster on-time graduation rates. AVID, a college-prep program at the school, is another. It consists of a rigorous course of study and the use of college students as role models.

Sixty percent of DPS students who graduated in May 2010 enrolled in college within the first year after graduation, according to the district.

“We’ll continue with these same programs,” said Lincoln principal Josefina Petit-Higa. “We keep tabs on the kids as much as we can. We can’t let them fall through the cracks.”

Kurtis Lee

“Changing the school start date is not going to be the solution for the heat, we all know that,” said board member Anne Rowe. “What it did do, I think, is set the stage for a much larger discussion around the school year, with regards to how that works in the best interest for students. That is a robust discussion.”

Superintendent Tom Boasberg was asked to commit to presenting the board with a plan for issuing heat days, which would work in the same way as snow days, by the board’s March meeting.

The calendar option approved in a 6-1 vote will have students starting school on Aug. 27 and ending June 4. That calendar would see a later winter break — from Monday, Dec. 24, returning to class Jan. 8 — and would shrink no-contact days, when teachers evaluate assessment data, to three days in the year.

During a discussion Thursday prior to the vote, board members considered various amendments to the calendars and weighed issues of sport schedules, test-preparation time and day care as they would be affected by the calendar changes.

Board member Andrea Merida, who voted against the calendar, attempted first to introduce an amendment to allow schools without air conditioning to choose their own start dates anytime up to Labor Day. That amendment failed with only Merida approving it.

In a public-comment session before the vote, four student representatives of the district’s student board of education talked about their preference for a calendar year to start Aug. 23.

The student board members conducted a poll at various high schools asking students about their preferences.

According to their poll, 75 percent of students wanted to start Aug. 23, compared with 11 percent who would have liked school to start after Labor Day.

A heat wave that coincided with the beginning of this school year in mid-August left students and teachers dealing with 90-degree heat in classrooms without air conditioning.

At least three incidents of heat-

related illness were reported in the first week of school.

Parents had gathered and delivered more than 3,000 signatures asking DPS to start the school year after Labor Day.

DPS then created a task force of parents and teachers to design and distribute a survey that was available online for nearly three weeks in November.

Respondents were almost evenly split among three options: no changes, starting in the fourth week of August, and starting in the first week of September.

In other board action, three new schools received innovation status for their opening this fall. Also, Trevista ECE-8 was approved to begin a turnaround — in which a new principal will be hired, staff will have to reapply for their jobs, and the school will get additional federal funds and flexibilities to design a program for improvement.

Yesenia Robles

The U.S. Attorney’s office today sent letters to 23 dispensaries located within 1,000 feet of a school. The dispensaries were told they have 45 days to close or face criminal prosecution and forfeiture of property.

“When the voters of Colorado passed the limited medical marijuana amendment in 2000, they could not have anticipated that their vote would be used to justify large marijuana stores located within blocks of our schools,” Colorado U.S. Attorney John Walsh said in a statement announcing the crackdown.

Colorado law specifies that dispensaries must be at least 1,000 feet from schools but also allows local governments to shrink that distance or grandfather in existing dispensaries.

The 1,000-foot buffer is also significant because it triggers enhanced penalties under federal law.

Federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents are working to identify other dispensaries within 1,000 feet of schools.

The U.S. Justice Department has previously said it would not target people operating in compliance with state medical-marijuana law. It then clarified that policy over the summer to state the exemption doesn’t apply to dispensaries and their owners.

The letters sent out today are sharply worded and leave little room for confusion.

“The dispensary is operating in violation of federal law, and the Department of Justice has the authority to enforce the federal law where appropriate even when such activities may be permitted under state law,” the letter reads. “Persons and entitities who operate or facilitate the operation of such dispensaries are subject to criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions under federal law.”

U.S. attorneys in California had previously sent such letters to dispensaries in that state. But federal prosecutors in Colorado had held off, leading to speculation that Colorado’s rigorous medical-marijuana business regulations would keep the federal government at bay.

Colorado has about 700 dispensaries, according to the most recent count of businesses that had an active license application pending with state regulators.

John Ingold

“We’re extremely happy,” said state Education Commissioner Robert Hammond. “Obviously there’s been a lot of hard work and disappointment in the past. Even though this is a reduced amount, we believe it will be extremely helpful.”

Colorado was one of seven states that won money for this round of Race to the Top. The fund was set aside for finalists that didn’t receive money in the second round.

Nine states were eligible for a share of $200 million provided by Congress. Colorado received $17.9 million.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said all the states funded in this round were finalists that had already earned the department’s trust.

“We had a high level of confidence in these states,” Duncan said. “We were simply looking for them to articulate their plans and ideas.”

Because the grants are smaller than in the first two rounds — Colorado had originally applied for $175 million — the original phase’s two applications had to be rewritten to limit the scope.

Putting together the application cost the state $600,000 this year, but the cost was covered with funds that education advocacy groups helped raise.

Colorado focused on four areas covering two projects: implementation of new state standards, including creating assessments and teaching resources for each new standard; and implementing educator evaluation systems.

“We’ve really been moving forward on this work anyway, so it will accelerate the momentum,” said Jill Hawley, the state Education Department’s chief of staff and strategy. “We’ve had such a demand for our services around educator effectiveness. We expect we will be able to reach more districts.”

Duncan, who called Colorado a leader in education, said it was the state’s persistence with reform that impressed him.

“Colorado didn’t stop their reforms,” Duncan said. “They are pushing forward with or without our investment. That’s exactly the attitude we want.”

Half of the money will be distributed directly to interested school districts in the coming months. The rest will help beef up centralized state support, through at least four full-time staff members and additional regional employees who will help school districts train teacher and principal evaluators.

Last week, the federal Department of Education announced winners in the third round of funding for early-childhood education programs. Colorado — one of 37 states to apply for a portion of the $500 million available — had hoped to bring home nearly $60 million but finished 12th, three spots away from the money.

Yesenia Robles

Colorado, among the top five states in the country for charter school enrollment, added 13 new charter schools and enrolled more than 8,500 additional students in the autonomous schools.

The data was released yesterday by The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Nationwide, data shows the number of students attending public charter schools has surpassed 2 million, and more than 500 new public charter schools opened in the current school year.

In Colorado, the 8,500 new charter school students represent an 11.9 percent growth.

California leads the nation in total number of charter schools with 983 schools in operation.

The report also keeps tabs on how many charter schools close each year to “provide further evidence that the charter school intent works — schools that do not meet the needs of their students should close.”

Nationwide about 150 charter schools were closed this school year.

Yesenia Robles

The possible reductions include the elimination of 590 full-time-equivalent positions, including 175 high school posts, 65 at middle schools and 226 at elementary schools.

The remaining 124 layoffs would affect administrators, business staff, custodians, technicians, coaches, aids and other instructional staff during school years 2012-14.

School Superintendent Cindy Stevenson is in her 10th year of the budget process, she said, but she’s never faced anything on this scale — the projected shortfall could be as large as $70 million, on the heels of a $60 million in cuts over the two previous years.

“My first year, I thought the world would come to an end because the budget officer said we had to reduce the budget by $14 million,” Stevenson said. “We already cut $40 million last year and $20 million the year before that. This is huge. It’s going to touch every part of our organization and everything we do.”

About $10 million in savings could be gained through four furlough days, which are unpaid days off that would equal a 2 percent reduction in compensation across the district.

Because a requirement of two furlough days was already in effect for 2011-12, it would mean an additional two furlough days, or additional 1 percent pay cut, Chief Financial Officer Lorie Gillis said.

Budget work groups made up of a cross-section of hundreds of people — including district staff, parents, union representatives other community members — met beginning in September to develop a list of proposed cuts. Earlier this month, they completed a $47.5 million package for the Board of Education and district officials to consider in January.

This afternoon, a 20-member Citizens Budget Advisory Committee — which also included some staff and union officials — released an additional $20 million in proposed cuts. This group also prioritized all $68 million identified reductions, 82 items in all.

“How far we go down the list will depend on state revenues and action,” Gillis said. “We won’t really know until early spring.”

Additional furlough days are a last resort. But among the first cuts on the list is a proposal that employees — rather than the employer — pay the mandated 0.9 percent annual increase in contributions to PERA, the pension plan for state employees. It would save the district $4.5 million.

Another priority is to save $1 million by increasing student walking distances by a half mile, eliminating some bus routes and stopping busing to option/choice schools.

“Nothing has been finally determined,” district spokeswoman Lynn Setzer said. “This is a starting point. Everything must still be negotiated.”

Some of the last-resort cuts are the the deepest. These include:

* At the 18 district high schools, nine assistant principals, nine counselors and 150 teachers could lose their jobs over two years.

* At the 19 middle schools, all 20 teacher librarians could be eliminated, along with 33 teachers, eight counselors and four secretaries.

* At the 92 elementary schools, losses could include 12 teaching aides, 21 enrollment secretaries, 24 teacher librarians, two assistant principals, 19 (all) instrumental music teachers and 194 other teaching jobs.

“As difficult as this is,” Gillis said, “we’re preparing and planning appropriately.”

A complete list of budget recommendations will be posted at www.jeffcopublicschools.org.

Electa Draper