sdsds.jpg Anxiety and uncertainty continues to grow as principals grapple with the bad news that cuts to next year's school budgets are likely to be "sustantially larger" than the 4.9 percentslash in funding they absorbed this year.  The only good news in recent weeks was the DOE's decision not to charge individual school budgets for the costs of their unpaid school lunches.  The DOE reversed course two days after Insideschools firstbroke the story.

Schools willbear the brunt of the looming $500 million cut in school aid from Albany, Chancellor Joel I. Klein warned in testimony before the City Council on Monday. Teachers will be the hardest hit, with over 5000 projected to lose their jobs, while central staff positions will be reduced by a modest 245 positions.

Also at risk of being cut or scaled back are parent coordinator positions in high schools, school lunch options, middle school busing and high school internship and work-readiness programs.

Inour last poll we asked our readers to imagine the worst -- massive teacher layoffs -- and consider who should make the decision about which teachers stay and which teachers go. <!--more-->Over 700 readers weighed in, but there was no clear consensus on should have the final say about layoffs. A majority of readers -- 53% -- believe that individual schools should decide, but even these voters were split, with 26% overall wanting principals to decide exclusively and another 27% wanting parents and teachers to have a say too.

Roughly a quarter -- 24% -- of all readers don't want seniority to be disregarded, preferring the LIFO (last in, first out) method be used, which would eliminate the jobs of teachers with the least work experience in the system.

The least, but not insignificant percentage -- 20 % -- agree with Chancellor Klein's preference to start with the 1600 teachers with "unsatisfactory" ratings and the 1000 teachers in the "excess" pool who have been unable to find a teaching job in schools this past year.