Broward School Board members managed to scrounge some cash to salvage a couple of axed projects as they passed a pared-down plan for construction, maintenance and technology over the next five years.

The nearly $1.3 billion budget -- less than half the size of the previous year's plan -- includes no additional money for new schools or major projects. The majority of the money is targeted at paying down debt, upgrading buildings for safety or health or fixing up old schools.

Removed from last year's nearly $3 billion plan: 33 replacement projects, nine new schools, 31 classroom additions, 21 major remodeling projects and hundreds of improvement projects.

Those cuts to the construction budget -- and a ruling from the state that the district has too many empty seats to justify building more -- eliminated dozens of classroom additions and several new schools that would have relieved crowding in western Broward schools.

Without those projects, Broward could have to change school attendance boundaries for three middle schools and three high schools in Weston, Pembroke Pines and Miramar -- forcing hundreds of students to switch schools beginning in the 2011-12 school year.

WORKSHOP

Board members discussed those possibilities at a workshop earlier Tuesday.

``I don't think any one of us would recommend a massive boundary change like this,'' board member Stephanie Kraft said.

To try to avoid unpopular boundary moves, board members agreed Tuesday to ask Broward cities and the county to loosen how they measure school overcrowding -- and to let the district use more temporary portable classrooms.

Overcrowding is now determined on a school-by-school basis.

Tuesday's proposal would group schools together in regions and measure overcrowding as a regional average.

The district has asked the state for special permission to build additional classrooms at 10 western schools that Broward considers overcrowded, including three high schools: Cypress Bay in Weston, Everglades in Miramar and Flanagan in Pembroke Pines.

MIDDLE SCHOOLS

The six middle schools on the board's list -- Pioneer in Cooper City, Glades in Miramar, Indian Ridge in Davie, Silver Trail in Pembroke Pines and Tequesta Trace and Falcon Cove, both in Weston -- would have been relieved by a proposed new middle school in the Weston area.

The state denied Broward permission to build that school, citing declining district enrollment and free space elsewhere in the county.

Board members approved the $1.3 million budget on a 7-0 vote; Beverly Gallagher and Robin Bartleman did not attend.

Among the projects affected:

• A new library building at Boyd Anderson High in Lauderdale Lakes that had been cut will be resurrected as a $1.5 million upgrade after community members protested delays.

• School Board Chairwoman Maureen Dinnen also moved a little over $1 million extra that wasn't needed at two other schools for a pool at Fort Lauderdale High that would have been cut.

• Kraft also asked that $1 million be shifted from one project at Coral Glades High to go toward a new auditorium there.