Just after finalizing negotiations with the Cook County Teachers Association over its teachers’ contract, settled just in time to avoid a state-imposed penalty, ISD 166 Superintendent Beth Schwarz has recommended cuts that would impact everyone from janitors to tenured teachers.
For now, teacher salaries will undergo a “soft freeze,” giving those not already at the top of the salary scale step and lane increases but not cost of living raises.
At an all-staff meeting Monday, January 18, 2010, Schwarz told the staff that the district is expecting an enrollment decrease of 28 next year and 10 in 2011-12, down to 460 students. By the end of that school year, the district is expected to be short $682,558 unless programs or personnel are cut.
Schwarz said the news she heard at the recent School Board Association convention “was very depressing,” with state funding expected to stay the same or decrease for the next seven to eight years.
“We are overstaffed,” Schwarz told the staff. “We do need to make some reductions in order to be fiscally responsible.”
Several teachers will be eligible to retire in the next five years, but she did not count on any of them doing so as she formulated four possible budgetcutting scenarios.
Quality control is important to Schwarz. “We constantly need to be asking ourselves, how does this impact students?” she said. She strongly recommended against altering the fouryear cycle in which the curriculum in every subject area is updated.
Schwarz said she was not willing to combine bus routes since some children have a long bus ride already, eliminate the part-time dean position created when the district went to a K-12 principal, significantly reduce the school counselor position, or reduce her own position. She is in the first year of a three-year contract. At a later budget work session with the school board, she said the district might want to consider reducing the superintendent position down the road.
Schwarz did recommend reducing her own benefits by $4,000, reducing secretarial staff, eliminating one elementary teacher and three paraprofessionals, and reducing or eliminating staff by increasing class sizes, among other things.
Schwarz would like to see the school consolidate office space and rent out what they aren’t using. She recommended reducing janitorial services, reducing coaching staff for extracurricular sports, restructuring health services, reducing special education programming, and cutting back on staff development spending. She is trying not to eliminate any class or extracurricular choices, she said, although she did recommend cutting the golf program.
One change that could save the district an estimated $135,000 a year would be to go to a four-day week. The school would not be ready to do this until the 2011-12 school year, however.
After secondary students register in February for fall classes, what can be cut while accommodating student and parent preferences can be better determined. Schwarz’s Powerpoint presentation stated, “Cook County residents and ISD employee suggestions need to be listened to and considered.” Schwarz said the process of initiating unrequested leaves of absence will begin in March.
The reductions Schwarz recommended total $694,133, an amount greater than the expected budget shortfall by summer of 2012.
The four scenarios proposed by Schwarz are:
1. No reductions. Schwarz said she considers this “fiscally irresponsible.”
2. Making 40% of the proposed program and personnel cuts in the 2010-11 school year and the rest (60%) the following year.
3. Making half the cuts next year and the other half the following year.
4. Making all the recommended cuts starting next fall. Schwarz said she considers this “educationally irresponsible.”
“As your superintendent,” Schwarz told the school board, “I am not in favor of scenario #1; I am not in favor of scenario #4.” Her first choice was scenario #3.
Schwarz has solicited suggestions from staff on how the budget could be trimmed. She urged the school board to listen to what staff members have to say. “I truly believe that a number of our employees believe that they have not been heard,” she said.
“Because we have a fund balance,” Schwarz said, “we are going to be in much better shape than school districts that don’t have one.”
Theweek before the staff meeting, Schwarz had given letters to 14 teachers warning them that their jobs might be reduced or eliminated. Decisions on who would be laid off would be based on seniority, program needs, and what various teachers are licensed to teach.
Schwarz urged the staff to be careful how they present the district to the public. A recent community survey showed that second or third on the list of where people get their information on ISD 166 was the answer “from school employees.” The staff should be sharing positive things going on in the district as well as things they are frustrated with, Schwarz told them.
The good news is that the enrollment is expected to stop declining by 2014, leveling off at a projected 434. If a referendum being considered by the school board passes next fall, it could allow certain programs that will be cut to be reinstated after the money starts coming in.
On January 20, the school board voted to make 60% of the necessary cuts next year and 40% the year after that.
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