Teachers, school district employees and parents pack the Lehman High School cafeteria to listen to proposed budget cuts in the $7 million range. The initial budget presentation drew many speakers asking that particular teachers, aides and programs be saved. (Photo by Cyndy Slovak-Barton)
CORRECTION: The story originally said incorrectly that the district has proposed to cut positions in the 2010-2011 school year.
by JENNIFER BIUNDO
Facing revenue shortfalls that could reach $12 million, Hays CISD officials released a preliminary plan Thursday afternoon to slash more than 100 jobs, including 31 classroom teaching positions, in the 2011-2012 school year.
The painful cuts come as the Texas Legislature prepares to squeeze contributions to local school district, with the state facing its own $25 billion shortfall.
“We’ve got a multi-million dollar problem created by a flawed funding system in Texas and a really deep recession,” Superintendent Jeremy Lyon told the crowd of teachers and community members gathered at Monday night’s school board meeting.
With 84 percent of Hays CISD’s $120 million annual operating budget consumed by employee salaries and benefits, the district had no choice but to turn to layoffs to fill the budget gap, Lyon said.
“It’s a tough time and it’s a sad day for us,” Lyon said. “These are really good people who are being told their positions are being proposed to be eliminated.”
The proposal cuts 31 classroom teachers, 56 out-of-classroom teaching positions including 18 instructional strategists, 18 campus technologists and 20 interventionists, as well as 15 custodians, two attendance officers and the Central Office position of Director of Librarians.
The crowd gathered Monday night may have been angry, but the majority of their wrath bypassed the school board and aimed straight for Texas Governor Rick Perry and the state legislature, whose Republican leadership has vowed not to increase taxes or raid the state’s reserve Rainy Day Fund to fill the budget shortfall.
“Governor Perry said it’s not a rainy day – I think he might be confusing the weather forecast with the financial forecast,” said Steve Thompson of the Hays chapter of the Association of Texas Professional Educators.
Like many in the crowd, Thompson said that Hays CISD employees and the school board should look for solutions together.
“We’re here to offer our help to the school board to cut costs in any way we can, while doing everything we can to preserve jobs for current employees,” Thompson said. “We’re educators. We’re creative, we’re innovative. We can find budget cuts. We can find ways to solve this crisis.”
Lyon said he appreciated the “solution-based approach” to grappling with the budget crisis.
“What we’re choosing between is bad choice A and bad choice B,” Lyon said. “To turn that conversation inward divisively doesn’t make bad choice A or bad choice B go away… We need to work together on this issue and look for solutions together as Team Hays.”
However, a number of meeting attendees said that it would be a mistake to make cuts to the teaching support staff, such as instructional strategists and interventionists, instead calling for more cuts to central administration.
Kim Bishop, a reading intervention teacher at Tom Green Elementary, said laying off interventionists would hurt the students who were already the most at risk.
“The students we see every day are the ones who could easily fall through the cracks,” Bishop said, adding, “Our students most in need will no longer receive the support that allows them to excel academically. It’s going to affect our academic performance and our dropout rate. These kids are going to be the ones that get to high school and don’t finish, because they’re so far behind their peers.”
The reduction in classroom teachers comes from a proposed increase in class size at all grade levels. Currently, Hays CISD maintains an 18-1 ratio at the three schools with the highest poverty rate and a 20-1 ratio at other elementary schools. Both are well below the state cap of 22-1, which could be expanded in this legislative session. Hays is considering raising the cap to 20-1 at the low socio-economic schools and 22-1 at the other elementary schools.
“We have been extraordinarily fortunate to be able to staff these schools at 18-1 and 20-1,” Lyon said. “We feel like given the magnitude of this funding crisis, it is very reasonable to take that funding formula and increase it to the state law.”
Central administrators delivered word of the cuts Thursday morning to principals, who were charged with passing on the bad news to their staff.
However, Lyon said he remains hopeful that nearly all of the employees whose jobs are on the block could move into other vacancies. Administrators instituted a district-wide hiring freeze last Thursday, intended to bank vacancies for the affected staff.
“On any given year for the last five to eight years we have had between 100 and 200 teaching openings,” Lyon said. “We are not going to advertise any positions outside of the district until we have explored every opportunity for these displaced teachers to apply for open positions and get placed back in the district.”
The personnel cuts amount to savings of about $5.5 million for the district. Additional cuts of nearly $1.5 million would impact transportation, technology, supplies and maintenance. For example, middle and high school students currently walk one-quarter to one-half mile to their bus stops; the district anticipates it could save $100,000 by increasing their walk to as much as one and a half miles.
Thursday’s proposal reduces the total budget by about six percent, or $7 million. However, Hays CISD is anticipating a total shortfall that could hit 10 percent, leaving an additional $4.8 million gap that the district plans to fill by tapping its ending fund balance. District officials worry that the final damage from the legislature could theoretically reach as high as $24 million, necessitating far deeper cuts.
“What we’re presenting tonight is a best case scenario, and it also relies on tapping into the district’s ending fund balance, which means this is not a problem that will go away next year,” Lyon said.
The announcement comes as districts across the state try to guess how deeply Texas legislators will slash school funding. Budget-writers won’t know the extent of the cuts until lawmakers approve their final budget, which might not happen until the end of the legislative session in May. Meanwhile, school administrators are constrained by laws stating that they must inform teachers of possible job reductions 45 days before the end of the spring semester.
“We have to do all this and we have no idea how much money we’re going to get,” Lyon said. “It’s building a budget based on looking into a crystal ball.”
Despite the sea of pink slips, Hays CISD’s financial situation is considerably less precarious than that of neighboring school districts, which are accompanying large-scale layoffs with more drastic measures such as school closures.
Lyon and the board trustees said they encouraged Hays employees and community members to contribute ideas for trimming the budget. The district will hold a workshop on March 7 seeking input.
“Remember, I first got on the school board during the Spanish-American war,” quipped long-time board member Ralph Pfluger. “I’ve never seen anything facing the school board of this magnitude. I think if we stay together, work together, give some ideas, not just criticism, that we can come out as well as we can.”
