BOISE -- State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Luna says painful cuts are ahead for Idaho Schools.
This morning Luna presented his 2011 budget proposal to state budget writers.
"As state superintendent, as a father, as a grandfather I hoped we would be in a different situation by now," said Luna. "I hoped our state revenue would have turned around. And we would be able to store some of the one time funding that had to be used, but that is not the case."
Luna gave the Joint Finance and Appropriations recommendations on how to fill a $135 million budget hole in the 2011 public education budget.
Luna wants lawmakers to tap earnings from a state endowment fund for an additional $52 million next year to soften the financial blow.
He also recommends transferring $5.5 million from Driver's Training fund, and the Safe & Drug Free school fund.
Along with those recommendations Luna also has six targeted reductions.
- Continue to freeze teacher salaries based on the salary funding grid for a 2nd year -- $6.1 million.
- Eliminating the Early Retirement Incentive Program -- $2 million.
- Eliminating transportation reimbursement for field trips -- $1.4 million.
- Reduce classroom supply budgets from $300 to $200.
- Eliminate the 99 percent average daily attendance protection -- $5 million.
- Combine technology and textbooks into a one line item and reducing it to $6 million -- $9.1 million.
The total reductions will save $25.2 million.
Luna also told the committee not to to eliminate the the Math Initiative, the Reading Initiative and Remediation Funding. He says by eliminating those programs we would eliminate the progress schools have made.
Luna says the cuts will be painful and if done wrong will significantly damage student achievement.
Public schools may also have to make millions of dollars in cuts for the school year that's underway right now.
In his State of the State speech, Gov. Otter proposed cutting nearly $28 million from public schools.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
