As early as next year, Vashon Island School District could cut more than four full-time teaching positions in an effort to mediate the district’s ongoing budgetary woes.

A budget oversight committee made the recommendation to the school board at last week’s meeting that a lower student-to-staff ratio ceiling be set, in part because student enrollment in the district is declining.

Former board member Gene Lipitz, who co-chaired the committee that made the recommendation, said last week that he hoped the cuts would be made by attrition.

Starting in fall 2008, hiring of staff with certificates — teachers and counselors — could be capped at 62.5 full-time teaching equivalents per 1,000, down from this year’s 65.75, according to interim Superintendent Terry Lindquist. This translates into a cut from 98.5 teaching staff to just under 94.

The 2008 figures are based on an anticipated district enrollment of about 1,500 students, and the real numbers could prove less than that.

The recommendation for certificated staff reduction came as no surprise to anyone following the board’s deliberations since the budget problems came to light in April.

Cuts have already been made to accommodate the decline in enrollment: In August for the current budget, staffing was capped at 65.75 per 1,000 students, almost two teachers fewer than the year before.

Proponents of the staffing cap said it would be a helpful benchmark.

“If in the past 10 years the board had a guideline like this, we would probably not have had the problems we now face,” Lipitz told the board.

The committee recommends requiring 62.5 be the budgeting target. Any proposal to exceed the staffing cap would require significant vetting before any hiring decision could be made, according to the committee’s recommendation.

Elizabeth Golen-Johnson, vice-president of the Vashon Education Association, the staff’s bargaining group, made a plea for retaining small class size.

“Teachers in this district have put small class size above salary and taken less salary than they might have gotten elsewhere to keep classes small,” she said at the meeting. “That’s because they understand that to succeed in the classroom they need to have a personal relationship with each kid.”

She added, “We know we are looking at how we can save the district, but remember to consider the children.”

In related matters, the budget oversight committee urged the board to hire more classified staff because the current number is too low by comparison to other districts of like size.

Classified staff are non-teaching support staff.

The committee also recommended that the board work for a more cost-effective district office location; look seriously at savings in the school bus area, where fuel costs are proving a grave threat; and, finally, creating a standing committee to keep a continuing eye on the budget.

The board looked at a second, though less earth-shattering, proposal the same night: keeping the current grade configuration of the three schools just the way it is.

The grade configuration task force was responsible for this recommendation.

Greg Allison, McMurray Middle School principal and co-chair of the configuration committee, said last week that the group went with the current setup because it involved the fewest transitions from building to building over the 12 or more years each student attended the district schools.

“Most of the other options increased the number of transitions,” Allison said, and he added that more transitions translate to more student stress.

Besides suggesting no change in the current distribution of grades across the three building sites, the task force also studied 10-year enrollment projections through 2017.

The task force used the help of Dr. Theo Eicher, a professor of economics at the University of Washington and a specialist in enrollment projections. Eicher confirmed what board members and Lindquist have believed for a while — that enrollments are on a long-term downward trend. Eicher projected a district enrollment of 1,359 by 2017, a drop of about 140 students from this year.

And lurking not far beneath the surface of enrollment projections and grade configuration is the question of how to remodel or replace current buildings.

The number of students drives the teaching space needed, as does grade configuration. A pre-kindergarten through fifth grade system has different building needs than a pre-K through eighth grade structure.

Both the committee and the task force are producing information that can inform the decisions of the facilities planning process, which has been under way for more than a year and is reviving after a spring-summer dormant period.

The grade configuration task force also recommended continuing Family Link and Student Link as well as vocational education and non-resident (off-Island) enrollment.