Shoreline Unified School District’s first attempt to slash budget expenses through attrition and faculty restructuring is underway. Trace Ceresa, a clerk who was worried about impending layoffs, resigned last month and will be replaced through an internal job search, likely by an instructional aide. The part-time position will be paid between $17.10 and $24.34 an hour to manage the district’s bills, scan invoices and other documents into an electronic archive and keep track of the inventory, in addition to other clerical duties. “This is our first opportunity to absorb a job. We’ve opened the job internally and not posted it anywhere outside,” said Tom Stubbs, the school superintendent. “What we are hoping to do is attract someone who might be currently an instructional assistant,” one of the positions slated for 2.9 cuts in the board’s recent resolutions to issue layoff notices to the equivalent of 16 full-time employees next month. “We’ll fill this position and won’t replace the one that they left,” he said. But the decision to replace someone in the district office at the expense of a classroom aide has baffled some of the school faculty who have asked for cuts to stay as far away from children’s educational experience as possible. Faculty had criticized previous proposals for focusing on teachers and support staff without including reductions for administrators or the district office. Including the superintendent, the district office currently has 4.25 full-time equivalents, the highest since the 2008-09 school year, before the recession dropped the office to three full-time equivalents, according to numbers provided by business manager Susan Skipp. The district clerk position was restructured after the district secretary retired in 2009, and both positions were combined into an administrative assistant. A separate district clerk position was not restored until this year: Ms. Ceresa started work on April 28, after her hiring was recommended by Ms. Skipp at the April 17 board meeting, just a few agenda items after she discussed meeting with the county’s finance officials regarding Shoreline’s budget. Mr. Stubbs said replacing the clerk was necessary because the other employees in the district office are overwhelmed. “If you ever come to the district office, and peer your head into the business side, those ladies are working all the time,” he said regarding Jeannie Moody, the district and personnel secretary, and Becky Evenich, the payroll technician. “They’re just working their tails off,” he said. Applications for the clerk position were due at the end of school on Wednesday, and interviews are scheduled for this Thursday.