Schools May Cut 384 Workers To Meet Proposition 21/2 Limits

The Cambridge school system will be forced to lay off 384 of its 1267 employees next year if the tax-cutting Proposition 2 1/2 is fully implemented in the city, school superintendent William Lannon told the school committee last night.

Lannon--who submitted a proposed budget for the next fiscal year at last night's meeting--said the bulk of the firings would be among teachers. More than 270 of the system's 786 teachers would be cut if Proposition 2 1/2 is not modified by the state legislature, Lannon said.

Cut

The budget also calls for cuts of 11 administrators, 14 clerks, 48 teacher's aides and 28 custodians.

Reduced to percentages, the entire full time staff of the schools would be reduced 31 per cent, and the teaching corps cut 35 per cent.

Lannon presented the "Proposition 2 1/2" budget and two other proposed budgets as well: one calling for a very slight increase over current spending which he said would allow the system to maintain a decent education, and a slightly smaller "level-funded" system that would preserve the current budget but absorb all inflation.

"It's too early to project what we'll end up with," school committee member Glenn Koocher '72 said. "We have to see what kind of relief the state legislature is going to give us," he added.

Lannon's budget message urged the adoption of the drastically reduced "2 1/2 budget" immediately, presumably in order to scare the public and the legislature into allowing modification of the controversial tax cut, which passed overwhelmingly in November.

But Koocher, chairman of the committee's budget subcommittee, said he thought a "tactful, diplomatic approach" to the legislature might be better. "It's been suggested the legislature wants to see blood; I think they might settle for some honest sweat," he said.

School committee vice chairman Alice Wolf said at a press conference Monday that the cuts mandated by Proposition 2 1/2 would "totally decimate the school system." She added, "Anyone that has an alternative will go to private schools or move to Weston."

School committee member Sara Mae Berman termed the referendum discriminatory. "I don't want to have a school system where only those with no other options go," she said.

"It's the people in the lower brackets that will be hurt worst," city councilor Alfred E. Vellucci added Monday. "Those in the higher income group can find their way to Nantucket or to the prep schools."