SYRACUSE -- In a plan the Superintendent calls balanced, but terrible, Syracuse Schools would close Levy School on the city's east side and eliminate 223 jobs. The plan brings the district's $352 million dollar budget into balance, but no one seems happy about it. Superintendent Dan Lowengard tells CNYcentral, "This for me is personal, I started my career at Levy."
If the plan wins approval, the transformation at Levy would start at the end of this school year. The district wont sell it - but instead use it as swing space - for overflow. That overflow space is something the district pays a million and a half dollars a year to lease at different places around town.
Facing the prospect of forcing 143 families to choose a new school for their children and putting teachers out of work, even the president of the teachers union sounded defeated about the budget mess. Anne Marie Voutsinas told CNYcentral, "We need to fight this all the way to Washington. I wish we could just print money in the basement, it seems that would be the only answer."
