By Andrew Chiappazzi and Daveen Rae Kurutz, timesonline.com
On a Wednesday night in late May, Erie Superintendent Jay Badams stood in front of his school board and a packed auditorium of parents to make a startling proposal: Rather than make more cuts and eliminate sports, arts and music programs, the district should pass an unbalanced budget.
Badams said he’d rather shut down all four of the city’s high schools than continue with program cuts. Drastic matters call for drastic actions, he said. When Badams took the helm of the state’s 10th-largest district in 2010, he erased a $26-million shortfall by cutting 240 teaching positions.
Enough was enough.
“The only things left substantial that we have to cut are student programs,” Badams said. “And that’s something we’ve tried avoid like the plague for the past five years.”
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