Photo by Casey Friedman

A few hundred people attended the fourth community budget workshop Monday night at Wood school. Another meeting is tonight at Lum Elementary School.

The district superintendent of Alameda schools said this week she would most likely not recommend closing a middle school to save money.

Attendance at the last four Alameda Unified School District community budget meetings has risen steadily. Word had spread about a possible closure of Will C. Wood Middle School, in addition to other reductions, to save the school district money. The community’s response, according to school district Superintendent Ardella Dailey, was “loud and clear.”

On Monday, at the fourth budget meeting, held at Wood Middle School’s gymnasium, Dailey said: “I am very sure I will not be moving the consolidation forward.”

After the meeting, Wood Middle School Principal Angela Ehrlich said she was relieved to hear the superintendent was no longer in support of closing the school.

“It’s a relief for my students and my staff that they are reconsidering the consolidation,” Ehrlich said.

As the school district works on the 2007-2008 budget, it faces a $2.1 million shortfall.

Dailey added: “I don’t want anyone to think that the problem went away.”

If Dailey chooses to not recommend closing Wood Middle School, she and the school district’s business department still must advise the board of education next week on how to save money.

“We still have a problem for all of our kids,” she said later.

The board of education will choose which programs to eliminate at their Feb. 27 meeting.

Closing Wood Middle School, one of three in the district, would save about $585,000 and help balance out an inequity in enrollment among the middle schools.

Dailey said if she doesn’t recommend the closure to the board of education on Feb. 13, she still wants to balance enrollment. But how, she could not say.

The school district is also looking at eliminating certain counseling services in the high schools, teaching and administrative positions and increasing the teacher-to-student ratio in some classes.

The school district’s financial woes primarily stem from a July 2006 arbitration agreement between AUSD and the teacher’s union. The agreement gave the teachers a pay increase, taken from a local parcel tax, which was passed to help fund the schools in 2005.

The school district has also had to deal with declining enrollment and less state funding for education.

Last year, although one new elementary school opened in the district, three elementary schools were closed and consolidated to save money.

The school district is also struggling to have the legally required amount of money in its coffers. Reserves have been tapped because of the financial shortfall, placing the school district in danger of county intervention.

At Monday’s budget meeting, nearly two dozen people spoke to the large, boisterous crowd in front of Dailey.

The Encinal Student Union, formed by Encinal High School students earlier that day, defended the necessity of programs like the College and Career Center and the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps — both of which could be cut.

Three students representing the student’s union contended that Encinal would be disproportionately hurt by the reductions, which could end Encinal’s JROTC without any equivalent reduction at Alameda High School.

Attendees also expressed opinions on how the shortfall should be addressed.

Earl Rivard, president of the teachers’ union, said: “If it comes down to having to cut something, that cutting has to happen far away from our schools.”

Some suggested reducing administration and paid consultants, as well as eliminating the Alameda Science and Technology Institute, a charter school, which serves about 80 students.

“It’s very easy to talk about cutting around the core,” but not truly feasible, Joshua Summit, an English language development coordinator at Wood, said. He proposed, instead, that each district employee take a voluntary 2 percent pay cut.

Another idea involved restructuring much of the district under the model of the public charter Alameda Community Learning Center, which has slowly accumulated a $380,000 reserve since its founding in 1996.

Superintendent Dailey and her cabinet will consider comments garnered in all four public workshops before bringing forward a revised Spending Reduction Plan at the Feb. 13 board of education meeting. The trustees will approve a final plan on Feb. 27.

“We need some long-term commitment and action in this community,” Dailey said. “We have hard choices.”

Contact Casey Friedman and Jonathan B. Opet at editor@alameda sun.com.