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Tucson Unified School District employees might be asked to take two unpaid furlough days to help close next year's projected $8.8 million shortfall.

It's only one option that will be floated when district officials meet this morning with representatives of employee unions to start hashing out ways to cut spending while trying to protect what happens in the classrooms to the degree possible.

Saying she didn't want to derail sensitive negotiations with labor unions representing teachers, blue-collar workers and administrators, chief executive officer Beatriz Rendon refused to disclose other cost-shaving options on the table. And she said it was too early to provide cost projections on how much the furlough would save.

But what is clear is that with employee salaries and benefits making up 90 percent of the budget, and with the governing board balking at proposals to close schools or cut down on librarians and counselors, options are shrinking.

"We're in a real mess, and this governing board has just continued to whittle their options down," said Steve Courter, president of the Tucson Education Association, which represents teachers. Courter said any proposal that eats into paychecks isn't going to sit well with his members. "Education professionals expect to be held to high standards in delivering services, but it's outrageous that we've come to a point where we're being asked to subsidize those services as well."

District officials have been here before. In 2004, a voluntary unpaid furlough was suggested. The difference this time, Rendon said, is that there are no cash reserves to help relieve pressure.

Cuts on the labor side are going to be increasingly tight, said Bruce Slabaugh, who heads TUSD's blue-collar union. Already, he said, the district has five electricians and five workers to service heaters or air conditioners in the district's roughly 110 schools. "Quite honestly, there's not much more you can cut operations and still fund a school district," he said, suggesting the district probe into the curriculum side of the budget.

Altogether, TUSD is facing a total deficit of about $20 million, but by asking departments to shave anywhere from 5 percent to 7.5 percent of their budgets, the district has shrunk the deficit to $8.8 million.

Employees at the central administration office are already taking out their own trash, given cuts in the janitorial staff. The communications department lost its temporary hourly workers who helped free staff up to handle requests from the public and the media for information.

"We're at a point now where reductions are going to start impacting services," Rendon said.

Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer sent a letter out to staff Wednesday warning that adjusting the budget will be "an extremely difficult task" and challenging them to work together to find solutions.

Transportation is one area that's been under the microscope.

One suggestion that will likely come up again, as it has in the past, is whether the district can save money on the district's 182 bus monitors, whose salaries and benefits cost roughly $4.2 million.

Thomas Mulligan, who took over the department in January, said that isn't an area rife with savings because while there is a community perception that those monitors are baby-sitting bus routes, the reality is that 142 of them are assisting special-needs students. Still, he said, the department is looking at whether cameras might be used to reduce some of those numbers where appropriate.

It costs about $36,000 to run a bus. By packing routes more efficiently, Mulligan said, the department has already reduced the number of buses on the streets from 257 to 242. It is also looking at capping field trips per school and consolidating longer trips to transport football teams, for example.

But there's only so much the department can save, given climbing fuel and vehicle costs. In fact, at a time when the district is losing students, the number of students taking the bus every day has jumped from 13,000 to more than 16,200 — a trend that may have roots in fuel cost increases.