Many say the cuts should be decided now, before students return to school on Sept. 6, and before school budget problems get worse.
School officials say it won't be easy, recalling how difficult it was to cut proposed spending by $710,000 when the City Council gave them an $85.7 million bottom line in May.
"What's left?" School Committee member Sarah Thompson asked at Wednesday's workshop on fixing school finances.
City officials and others say further reductions are necessary to ensure that this year's budget, which went into effect July 1, won't have overspent accounts and revenue shortfalls similar to the $82 million budget that ended June 30.
Potential problem areas include $30 million in teacher salaries, which could increase if additional employees take advantage of new pay incentives based on professional development; and $1 million in projected Medicaid reimbursements, an amount that did not materialize last year and could fall short again this year.
At this point it's unclear how much should be cut, where spending reductions would be taken or when Superintendent Mary Jo O'Connor and the School Committee will take action.
When committee members asked O'Connor on Wednesday about the spending cuts she's considering, she declined to offer details.
O'Connor has come under fire in recent weeks for an admitted lack of financial expertise. O'Connor did say that she and her staff are looking for savings in all programs that aren't mandated by law.
The city's finance staff, which has begun helping the School Department reconcile its accounts, expect to have a solid number for last year's deficit by the end of August.
The city staff took over after school Finance Director Richard Paulson resigned, in part because it came to light that a department employee had failed to report $900,000 in expenses over four months while under Paulson's supervision.
Avoiding another deficit also may mean saving enough in this year's budget to repay whatever money is borrowed from the city's $20 million reserve account to cover last year's deficit.
The School Department has a $1 million surplus account that can be used. The rest would be covered by the city's reserve account, but would have to be repaid to preserve Portland's high financial rating, which ensures better interest rates when the city borrows or invests money.
"It helps to show you're willing to bite the bullet now and not wait until next year," said City Manager Joseph Gray Jr.
Gray said delaying cuts would only put more pressure on the school budget next year, when school officials must start reducing spending in several noninstructional areas to comply with the state's new school consolidation law.
Gray said the responsibility for reducing school spending rests squarely with school officials, despite the city's involvement in figuring out the schools' troubled finances and the possibility that the city and school finance offices could be combined permanently in the coming months, as they were in the 1980s.
Joline Hart, human resources director for the schools, said staff cuts may be unavoidable because reductions have been made everywhere else. Hart said there's little or no wiggle room in the $55 million salary budget for all 1,150 school employees.
For the district's 700 teachers in particular, the department has budgeted $725,000 for 2 percent salary increases, $550,000 for step increases and $360,000 for so-called lane changes, a facet of the new teachers' contract that recognizes a wider variety of professional development.
The contract has a new salary scale with 10 lanes. Teachers can advance a lane by completing 225 hours of approved professional development, such as creating a new curriculum or taking university...
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