CHARLOTTE
Budget cuts are responsible for most of the loss of 3,700 teaching jobs in North Carolina, and school officials fear it will be worse next year when federal stimulus money dries up.
Some schools have eliminated foreign languages, high-level science classes and other electives, and 35 or more students now fill some classrooms.
North Carolina has a total of 95,377 teachers, down from 99,098 last year. About 700 of those lost jobs can be attributed to to 13,000 fewer kindergarten children entering school last fall because of the new age cut-off date.
Legislators cut $789 million from the public school budget for this year, which included $225 million in reductions left to local districts to make. School districts used federal stimulus money to keep more teachers than they ordinarily would in light of the state budget cuts.
"I think the General Assembly did the best they could by us in light of the budget situation. We would present the case that deeper cuts would really have an adverse impact," Bill Harrison, State Board of Education chairman, said of the budget negotiations ahead.
The numbers come from an annual report prepared by the state Department of Public Instruction just a few months before the state legislature returns to Raleigh to put together the 2010-11 budget.
The proportion of state funds going to public education dropped to 35 percent, down from 39.4 percent last year and more than 50 percent in 1970, according to the DPI report. That means local districts have grown more reliant on federal money that may not last.
Bigger classes and fewer class choices don't mesh with the state's education goals, said Sheri Strickland, president of the N.C. Association of Educators.
"We're going the wrong way," she said.
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