Alternative cuts from the Children’s Allocation Team

SF budget blog has learned about a proposed set of alternative cuts from a group called the Children’s Allocation Team (CAT). The CAT Proposed Budget was presented at the SF Board of Education’s Committee of the Whole meeting this past Tuesday.

Apparently SFUSD’s proposed cuts were developed by something called the Resource Allocation Team (RAT). So the CAT team says they want to work with (not eat?) the RAT team to create a budget that protects the classroom.

Here is an excerpt from an email we received from the CAT team:

Have you heard?…

…about the Children’s Allocation Team (CAT)?  This group of parent advocates and educators have taken the budget shortfall for SFUSD ($113 million for the next 2 years) and created a alternative set of cuts that defends the classroom.  The CAT budget would mean:

• NO CLASS SIZE INCREASES
• NO FURLOUGH DAYS
• NO CUTS TO PARAPROFESSIONALS, COUNSELORS, PARENT LIAISONS, etc.

The budget that CAT created, entirely on their own, is not perfect and still needs some blanks filled in.  But the point of it’s creation is to show that OUR BUDGET CAN BE BALANCED WITHOUT TAKING AWAY OUR CHILDREN’S TEACHERS, PARAPROFESSIONALS, NURSES AND OTHER SUPPORT STAFF!!  These cuts would be felt on the administrative level and would leave our class size intact, and maintain the adult to child ratio that we currently have.