The budget is not all growth, however, as Lucero is also recommending reductions. The biggest proposed cut — $1,125,000, is for a reduction of about 25 instructional
para-educators, or “paras,” mainly media paras who assist each school’s media specialist.
In turn, Lucero hopes to move the instructional paras to open positions for special education paras. The district has 19 vacancies for special education paras, part
of a teacher shortage the district faces in certain subjects, including special education.
“I’m questioning whether or not we’ve saturated the market with paras,” said Lucero, adding, “When we have openings for instructional paras, they’re rarely open, but
there are quite a few openings on a regular basis for our SPED paras, and because of that we have to figure out how we can reduce the amount of para openings that we have,” said Lucero.
Diane Phanos, president of the Stamford Education Association teachers union, said the SEA is against any reductions to media paras or any other teaching positions.
“Tamu is looking at is as a costs savings, but I think the loss of paras will have a devastating impact on the functioning of school media centers,” said Phanos.