Tredyffrin Easttown School District taxpayers should not feel that they are alone with challenging school budget problems. One of the purposes of looking at other districts (such as Great Valley and now West Chester) is to see if can learn anything new or examine other ways to handle similar problems. Dan Kristie is reporting in today’s Daily Local that West Chester Area School District Superintendent Jim Scanlon announced that he is recommending that the school board cut 19 district jobs. The cuts will be carried out by attrition – when current staff members retire, their jobs will not be replaced. Cutting of these 19 jobs (which include 3 assistant principal jobs) will save the district $1.4 million annually. The suggested cuts were developed by the administration and the Community Budget Task Force, a group of more than 150 stakeholders who met last year to help the district identify cuts. Here’s one West Chester Area taxpayer’s take on the announcement:

Attrition means forced retirement or risk termination for some folks. As a former Educator that is the one field that you never thought would be impacted by economic downturns but they are quietly finding that they have stood behind their union protection for far too long almost to the point of holding the very people whose children you educate are paying to keep you there hostage.

They are no more entitled to job security than anyone else. If you can do more with less people then by all means do more with less.

To those who will lose jobs in all of this…WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD.

Mr. Scanlon . . . I know it’s tough to tell your people tough times call for tough decisions but then again that’s a part of your job too. “