California schools Superintendent Jack O’Connell says he has no plans to cut the pay of education department staff members following Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s to cut pay for more than 200,000 state employees to the federal minimum wage level of $6.55 an hour.
The Republican governor said he issued the order “to avoid a full-blown crisis.” The state budget for the current 2009 fiscal year is overdue in part because of an impasse in the legislature over how to close a $15 billion deficit.
Mr. O’Connell said his department was taking steps to implement its own cost-reduction measures.
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