Pinellas school officials no longer are proposing a 2 percent pay cut for about 14,000 district employees and a 6.25 percent cut for 2,000 non-instructional employees. Now, the worst case is a 1.5 percent cut for all 16,000 employees.

What changed? In a School Board workshop today, budget officials proposed to cut deeper into the district's reserves by $4.8-million and they said they learned that the system's property and casualty insurance will cost $1.1-million less than anticipated. Both developments make more money available for salaries. Instead of a $43-million in cuts, the district is now looking at cutting $37-million.

Officials also proposed ways to lessen the pay cut further or eliminate it, but all of them involved increasing health insurance premiums for employees.