PSS makes 10% salary cuts

The Public School System announced a 9-10 percent salary cuts yesterday to live within a 13.4 percent reduction in its general budget.

And while PSS assured that there would be no layoffs, it nevertheless ordered notices to be sent out to employees with incomplete contracts in what was construed as a gesture of notifying them of release if funds fell short.

“I have no more good news for us,” Commissioner of Education Rita H. Inos told school principals yesterday in a meeting.

Inos said the pay cuts would spare no one, including herself.

A squeeze in government funds forced a cutback of the school system’s budget from $42 million to $38 million for fiscal 1999.

It was estimated that with a watered-down budget, PSS will run out of funds by March.

PSS officials are hoping that future quarterly allotments would be restored to their original level. If not, the likelihood persists that PSS may let go of about 150 employees whose job contracts have not yet been finalized.

To alert the employees of that possibility, a 90-day notice will be served on them.

“We have done the homework to lay out the options — the most promising is the (pay) reduction,” she said. “My priority is for the schools to remain open.”

Inos said she had tried to steer the cuts away from the system and keep them at school level, but huge deficits at bigger schools render her efforts futile.

The Marianas High School, for one, has accumulated more than $1 million in deficit.

With the pay cuts, PSS will try to arrange with creditors for restructured payments for loans of employees.

Inos said the budget crunch makes impossible for now to bring in replacements for 50 employees who have resigned or retired.

“It’s truly been a bumpy and uphill battle for me. I felt a sense of frustration because I know your expectations. But I remain optimistic because I am working with good people,” Inos told a visibly distraught audience.

The pay cuts were taken because a shortened office time is thought to violate civil service terms.

Inos was also disturbed by rumors reaching her office that several employees might not return from the Christmas holiday break, shaken by insecurity from the financial constraints of PSS.

The cuts have been the latest in a sequence of austerity measures taken by PSS.