Administrators in Ypsilanti Public Schools may have some more budget juggling to do after being directed by the school board to reexamine the elimination of student service coordinators Monday.

The positions were cut from the district’s budget for the 2011-12 school year, saving about $326,000. As of now, one of the coordinators, Michael Johnson at Adams Academy, has been reassigned to a part-time position at Perry Childhood Development Center. Student service coordinators were used as assistant principals to aid building principals in overseeing discipline matters at each school.

Sharine Buddin, principal at Perry, said she was more concerned about returning to school in the fall than she has ever been during her time in Ypsilanti.

“I can’t be every place that I need to be,” she said. “I’m very, very concerned. … If I got sick, I don’t know who’s in charge at Perry school and this is a big concern.”

The school board’s district operations committee, which consists of Trustees Andy Fanta, Ellen Champagne and Edward Jackson, will examine the issue of the student service coordinator positions at a to-be-determined date.

The discussion arose as the Ypsilanti school board considered a resolution ratifying the latest adjustments to the district’s deficit elimination plan. The plan presents a number of spending cuts and concessions from district union groups to eliminate the district’s current $6.4 million deficit by 2015.

The deficit elimination plan was originally updated and passed in January and includes about $2.2 million in concessions that will need to come from district employees for the 2012-13 budget.

Chief Financial Officer David Houle said the deficit will have to be eliminated by the end of the 2014-15 school year. The district originally planned to have it eliminated by the end of the 2013-14 school year, but extended it an extra year — an idea that state officials were apparently not happy with.

The plan assumes the district’s enrollment will grow from the 3,617 students expected for 2011-12 to 3,655 and stay constant. It also assumes the district’s fund balance will grow from $7,762 in 2011-12 to $7,983 next year and stay constant.

To view the deficit elimination plan, click here.

Although the elimination of the student service coordinator positions was originally in the deficit elimination plan, the trustees directed Superintendent Dedrick Martin and Houle to take a second look at achieving the same amount of savings in another area to keep the positions.

Buddin and Estabrook Elementary School Principal Joe Guillen told the school board that both of their schools will be filled to capacity in the 2011-12 school year. With about 600 students in each building, both principals said it wouldn’t be possible to do their jobs thoroughly and they feared for the children’s safety.

Fanta said not having the student service coordinators in the schools could lead to increased disciplinary problems, something he believed would cause families to leave Ypsilanti.

“We’re shooting ourselves, possibly, in the foot if we don’t acknowledge these positions are vital,” he said.

Trustee Floyd Brumfield said he agreed with Fanta and Trustee Kira Berman, also spoke in favor of reinstating the positions, but wanted to give administration more time to figure out where the money would come from.

Before submitting the budget, which was approved on June 27, Martin said he looked for numerous ways to keep the positions in the budget.

Among them was so-called best practices money that the state would give to districts that accomplished certain benchmarks put forward by Gov. Rick Snyder. Martin said that money would have been enough to keep the student services coordinators in the budget.

However, the cut in state funding for the district, a total of $470 per pupil, made that plan moot because any extra money must go toward paying off the district’s deficit.

“We have to pay back the money that we borrowed and spent,” Martin said, adding that he hated cutting the positions because they were his idea in the first place before the 2010-11 school year.

Martin emphasized that if the school board decides to reinstate the student service coordinator positions, the $326,000 the district would save from eliminating them will have to come from somewhere else.

“Everything we add, we have to subtract from somewhere else or else it throws us further off reducing this deficit,” he said.

Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com or you can follow him on Twitter.