The 5% Solution - I Hope Not!

Our $62,000,000 school budget looks like this: 62% goes towards teacher salaries, and that expense is mandated by a negotiated contract with their unions, and as such is un-changeable. Benefits for teachers and other administration adds another 13% to this pile of un-changeable expenses, and after you add the 7% of the budget that goes towards debt service, that takes about 82% of our school budget off the table!

So what is left in the budget? Operations and Maintenance accounts for about 8% of the budget, and covers required expenses to keep our school s running and safe – not too much to trim here. Transportation accounts for about 6% of the budget, and nearly all of it is mandated by the state, so again it is not negotiable.

Administration accounts for an additional 3%, and since most of their activity is required to ensure our schools are operating in accordance with all regulations, nothing can really be cut from here either.

Last year, our budget had a number of Capital Improvements that amounted to just over $2,000,000. Regrettably, I’ll pull all of those costs.

I would not hire any new teachers to replace out-going staff, and would instead take the opportunity to revisit class sizes across the district, and staff only those positions absolutely required to meet state and federal requirements. This would mean some teachers would be re-deployed outside their current department for emergency assignments, and courses would be cut. Busing is next up – Hazardous Busing amounts to about $400,000, and when facing cuts of this size, it puts my position on Hazardous Busing to the test. I feel that busing is the responsibility of the School Board, and while I am tempted to take that $400,000 and eliminate it, I can’t – many families rely on busing, and our schools are not configured for a few hundred of parent drop-offs each day. Cutting Hazardous Busing creates too many risks.

So where are we? I’ve saved an estimated $2,000,000 by refusing all capital investment, and I’ve trimmed our teaching staff by as many positions as possible without laying off any teachers. If 13 teaching positions are cut across all 7 schools – that amounts to $1,000,000 in savings, figuring an average $75,000 per eliminated teacher, based on $62,000 in average base pay, plus estimated $13,000 in benefits that are saved per teacher. But at what cost?

We would have bigger class sizes, reduced choices and opportunities for our students across all grades, teachers teaching outside their area of expertise, and a physical plant that is at risk of serious failure during the coming year.

Cutting 5% out of the school budget, when over 80% of the annual budget is non-negotiable, means you really are being asked to cut 25% of the negotiable budget, let’s all hope this hypothetical never comes to pass, because the impact of this one year’s budget cut would be felt for years to come, to the continued detriment of all the students in our district.