The Conejo Valley Unified School District Board of Education approved the first round of cuts needed to balance the 2010- 2011 budget amid objections about adult school and school site reductions.

The district’s budget committee, made up of principals, teachers, board members and representatives of the District Advisory Council, Conejo Council PTA and the Conejo Schools Foundation, among others, presented the recommendations during last week’s board meeting.

The first phase of cuts amount to $11.6 million—the majority of which will come from the district’s $4.6 million “rainy day fund” reserve and $3.2 million in negotiated employee compensation reductions.

Nearly $1.5 milion will be cut from school site programs and district office and support programs. The adult school will be cut $300,000 in phase one.

Eliminating two special education teachers, two paraprofessionals, groundskeepers, maintenance workers and a mail delivery driver will save money is the district office.

School sites enabled cuts by eliminating elementary counselors and custodians, as well as slashing coaching stipends and reducing remedial reading programs and roving counselor hours.

Conejo Valley Adult School Principal Mike Waters said the first $300,000 in cuts will cause increased fees and fewer class hours.

Until last year, CVAS’ budget was $4.5 million with 60 percent coming from the state. The state slashed $400,000 last year, and an additional $100,000 this year, mainly balanced by cutbacks in office staff.

“Who would have thought that the ‘good old days’ would be just three months ago?” Water asked.

There are 150 mostly part-time instructors at CVAS and 7,000 people who attend classes.

“We’re asking our students to be in class each day, and we’re asking more of them in fees,” Waters said. “For the first time, free public education is no longer there. It’s gone from free to $25 a class (last year) to $50 a class (next year). That’s hard for some people to do. We don’t want to scare them away.”

More than a dozen people, including teachers and students, spoke on behalf of the adult school.

Maria Spence, an ESL teacher, asked the board to preserve the “accessibility and affordability” of CVAS programs.

“Conejo Valley adult education is an avenue for people in this community to achieve their goals,” Spence said.

Mexico City-born Elizabeth Rodriguez is one such student, studying to be a nurse. She’s been in the U.S. for seven years and started English classes at CVAS three years ago.

“The first thing I needed to learn was English,” Rodriguez said. “I need to continue studying. That’s why I’m asking you to keep CVAS alive and strong.”

Cuts to the school libraries’ instructional media techs also drew several speakers, and resulted in fewer hours cut for the position. In phase two, the budget committee is recommending an additional $2.2 million in salary reductions, $490,000 from the district office and $400,000 from school site programs.

The district will also transfer $1.2 million from the deferred maintenance reserve and recommended taking an additional $500,000 from the adult school.

If cuts do exceed $600,000 (the recommendation is to cut $800,000 total), Waters said the school will still operate.

“Adult school will still be here,” Waters said. “But we can’t predict how we’ll fare. We’ll be a lot more unsure of enrollment if we have to increase fees that much.”

Board members Betsy Connolly and Mike Dunn both fought hard to limit cuts to CVAS.

“There are no circumstances I can imagine where I’m going to vote in phase two to cut deeper than $600,000,” Connolly said. “Come May, I’m not going to go for $800,000. I’d rather dip into reserves at that point than injure the adult school as much as we could.”

While Connolly advocated using the 3 percent reserve the district maintains before taking an additional $500,000 from CVAS in May, Dunn wanted to dip into reserves immediately and avoid phase one cuts for the adult school entirely.

Jeff Baarstad, deputy superintendent of business services, said it’s “too soon” to dip into the reserves. He hopes only a fraction of the phase twp cuts need to made, which will be determined when the governor’s May revision to the state budget is available.

“With all due respect,” Baarstad said, “We’ve had a budget committee who has worked on this since last August. They felt strongly that the adult school should share in the solution in both phase one and two.

“They really felt like the focus had to be on K-12 programs. How do you say that and still emphasize the respect we have for adult education and preschool programs?”

Dunn made a motion to approve the budget recommendations without any cuts to adult education, but didn’t have support from the board. Connolly made sure the committee knew that the board didn’t support another $500,000 cut to adult education, and they sent back phase two for more work.

Phase one—more than $11 million of cuts—was approved unanimously.