In that amount of time, the Pinellas School Board dispensed with months of hand-wringing over a 2003-04 budget, which includes the deepest cuts since the early 1990s.
More cuts are expected next year unless state lawmakers earmark new money for education.
Board members unanimously approved a budget that will spend $761-million on operating expenses such as salaries and benefits, supplies, textbooks, student transportation, utility costs and maintenance. That's $15-million more than last year.
The district also will spend $282-million on capital projects such as land purchases, construction and remodeling, new computers and new buses. That's about $31-million less than last year.
Overall, the budget will decrease to $1.16-billion - a drop of $52-million from the 2002-03 fiscal year. The district's property tax rate will drop 2.4 percent.
The reduction led to the loss of nearly 600 district jobs, but most of the affected employees were not laid off. Most of the 400 teacher assistants who were removed from classrooms were offered other jobs in the district, officials say, and a number of employees who held administrative jobs were moved to positions at schools.
Driving the cuts was the decision by Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature to not raise taxes in the face of an expensive mandate by voters to reduce class sizes. The district got $24-million more from the state this year than last, but nearly all of it went to pay for the class-size amendment, leaving little to cover the cost of inflation and other new expenses.
Still unresolved are raises for the district's 8,000 teachers. District superintendent Howard Hinesley said money has been reserved in the budget for a modest pay increase of about 1.5 percent. But it can't be spent until the district finds out from the state next month whether it has spent enough on reducing class sizes.
