Teachers' Salaries Not Considered for Cuts

Among the cuts the could consider, teachers' salaries and elementary school music, arts and physical education aren't going to be considered. But some non-teaching positions could be on the chopping block.

School board members say that if the salaries are cut and become less competitive, the quality of teachers the system attracts will also decrease.

"I think there's definitely a correlation between wanting higher caliber teachers and the outcomes that we get" with setting higher salaries, board member Shirley Brown said. … "We can't cut our teachers' salaries much more than where we're at now without going into the referendum dollars."

Brown added that she didn't agree with that aspect of the MGT consultant report and caused her and some members in the community heartburn.

Every four years voters decide whether to renew a millage rate that helps fund public schools since 2002. It must be approved every four years and has allowed the school system pay for teachers' salaries, extended school days and other operating expenses.

The school board and Superintendent Lori White reviewed Tuesday the 16 recommendations for immediate cuts recommended in a over a three year span. No immediate action was taken at the workshop.

Board member Jane Goodwin agreed with Brown's comments saying the additional funding paid through the referendum pays teachers to work longer, providing a seventh period allowing more course options for students. And the majority of teachers in the system have master's or doctorate degrees.

"Sixty-five percent of our teachers have a master's degree or higher that equates to higher salaries because we do pay more money for master's and higher," Goodwin said.

White express her disdain for considering to attempt to try to reduce music, physical education and art again. MGT recommended cutting 12.5 full-time positions at the elementary school level saving $881,812 a year, or $4.4 million over three years.

"I learned after living and having to lead that effort to reduce art and music, and particularly PE and having coaches coaching teachers to do it and guys, I will never live through that again," White said. "I will tell you emphatically that it doesn't work, and we gave it our best shot."

What happened was the administration saw the instructional quality decreased, and today, teachers have hard enough time trying to meet core requirements and demands and having to throw a specialized area like art on top of could diminish both the art experience for students and the teacher's commitment to their primary area, White said.

"We're not going there 'til doomsday," she added.

Goodwin, Board Chairwoman Caroline Zucker and Vice Chairwoman Carol Todd agreed those areas should not be cut.

"If there's one loud message out that is do not touch art, music — that's what this community prides itself on and it shouldn't be touched," Zucker said.

Though those two categories are saved for now, eliminating some non-teaching staff such as behavior specialists are on the table MGT recommended eliminating 10 percent of non-teaching positions, which equates to nine positions, to save $634,905 a year. Over three years, it could save $3.1 million.

Guidance counselors would be excluded, but included would be behavior specialists, high school scheduling/testing coordinator, English Language Learner teacher trainers, English for Speakers of Other Languages position, Exceptional Student Education liaisons, program specialists, social worker positions and administrative interns.

Any of those areas would be hard to cut, especially behavioral specialists, White said, but the school system would continue to evaluate to see what's possible to cut.

Kovach was cynic about the recommended cuts as the board routinely found difficult decisions ahead given the recommendations.

"I think this is why MGT left town when they made these recommendations," joked board member Frank Kovach.

Most of the cuts focused on education services, and to White, it made sense that would be targeted because the school system has worked to avoid cutting that area.

For several of the recommendations, the school board found unintended consequences or a different calculation of savings.

For example, the recommendation to remove 86 portables each year wasn't totally possible. MGT says $407,640 could be saved while the school system said it would eventually save $203,040 by the third year.

A portable costs about $100,000 to buy and site and another $1,440 for power and water, according to the school system.

White said the school system will target to remove 25 portables or move some elsewhere. Some teachers might be using a portable for storage physical education equipment and ought to be used for classes, so the school would have to build a storage area, and that portable will be removed. Others are removed due to age, she said.

This summer, portables at Gocio Elementary School will be removed at a cost and will be replaced by new ones, White said.

She said equally distributing portables would only happen if there would be redistricting to match the needs, she added. Plus, portables are needed during school construction.

"We want to have enough inventory of accessible portables to allow for that kind of renovation project," she said.

For the most part, it's easier to say why a lot of the recommended cuts can't be completed in whole, one board member said.

"I know what you heard is two hours of why we can't do any of it," Kovach quipped.

Among the things the school system can't do or can't do easily:

• Pay full-time employees once a month because of hardships on people who have a routine of getting a paycheck twice a month and the manual checks that have to be written for payroll corrections

• Reduce finance staff given that MGT provided high marks for the department. 

• Further automation of records processing because work required for automation would negate the anticipated time saving for retrieval of records. Digitizing records would prove to be lengthy as there is a six-year backlog of records that would have to be converted.

Additional warehousing for certain records would be needed, which would cost more money. Training additional staff would be difficult.

• Create a fraud/ethics hotline maintained by a third party and create an audit control position shouldn't be done because the school system hasn't had a culture or history of corruption and fraud, White said.

• Can't cut whole 10 percent of classes that have 15 or fewer students because the staff do not have regular classroom assignments. Some classes are gifted and talented classes, too.