Schools bend under tight budgets

Each day, Marla Jenkins packs a lunch for her third-grade son Cortay. She refills his Spider-man backpack with pencils and notepaper when it's low. Occasionally, she sends him off with more unusual supplies - toilet paper and soap.

Because of Birmingham's desperate fiscal situation, she and other parents are being asked to pitch in and buy what would ordinarily be the school district's responsibility. "I was starting to wonder what was going on when we were being asked to buy things like facial tissues and Ziploc bags," she says.

The financial crisis facing the educational system here - a $17 million shortfall in a district that already can't afford light bulbs - is dire enough that the state is considering taking over the city's schools.

In a dramatic sense, Birmingham mirrors the predicament facing school administrators across the country. From Los Angeles to Long Island, districts are being forced to make tough choices about everything from chess club to school dances amid the worst financial crisis in 10 years.

Many students are being asked to pay for extracurricular activities, such as band and cheerleading. Others are being squeezed into already overcrowded classrooms.

For example:

• In Albert Lea, Minn., children who live within two miles of a school are being forced to walk unless parents pay a $30 monthly fee to offset the costs of busing.

• In Muskogee, Okla., the school board is no longer paying for field trips or spring sports travel. The cuts will affect basketball, baseball, soccer, golf, tennis, and track teams.

• Oregon is scrapping its writing, science, and math tests in certain grades because they're too expensive to administer.

To be sure, tight economic times have always meant tight school budgets. But since the last recession a decade ago, districts such as Birmingham have become increasingly dependent on sales taxes - a funding source especially vulnerable in economic downturns.

"The funding situation here, as it is in many states, is very desperate now because the economy has taken a turn for the worse," says Paul Hubbert of the Alabama Education Association, a teachers' union, in Montgomery.

For example, in the 2001-02 school year, 17 states had to cut education funding because of budget shortfalls. So far this year, 44 states are facing cutbacks, according to the National Educational Association (NEA) in Washington.

"States don't have any excess funds left," says Mike Griffith, a policy analyst at the Education Commission of the States in Denver. "So districts are spending any reserves they have and cutting all the fat they can."

The funding crisis is exacerbated in the South, a region with a limited property-tax base. Thus, many states here routinely rank at the bottom of spending per child - something neither residents nor many state legislatures have been willing to change, educators say.

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