Just finished our special budget meeting. We had lots of discussion on the 4 topics that were delayed until today. The 4 items were a 5% reduction to Building Budgets/ Department Budgets, Eliminate 4 IMC Paraprofessionals at CG, TP, GD and HS, Extend walk area to 2 miles and Reduce Elementary Related Arts instructional minutes.
The 2 mile walk zone impacts more students than first discussed. Due to this the board agreed not to institute the walk zone as proposed. The cut to reduce the elementary arts was also removed from the list of potential cuts on a 7-0 vote.
The board also voted 6-1 to remove the building budgets from the list of potential cuts. The department budgets will still be discussed in the coming months for potential savings.
The IMC paraprofessionals discussion was original going to ask for more information regarding how the staff would be utilized if we cut 1, 2, or 3 of the 4 positions in the original proposal. After more discussion I moved to eliminate only 2 of the IMC Paraprofessionals and this motion passed on a 6-1 vote. This will result in an additional $66K in savings and when added to the previous total of $745k we have cut about $811K. This is $189k short of our stated $1M deficit.
Some board members felt that this $811K amount is okay, because we still have a chance to save in departmental budgets or possibly in administrative costs or in increased open enrollment dollars. I will argue that not making the full $1M in cuts this year makes the task bigger next year, continues to use fund balance and violates board policy of keeping our fund balance above our stated goal of more than 15%, which negatively impacts our short term borrowing. I don't like any of the cuts we have made, but these are the tough decisions we have been elected to make and coming up short is a disservice to our district in my opinion. I am hopeful that we can close the gap thru the other options that we will discuss in the coming months.
On another note and this is just my opinion.......
A lot of tonights discussions centered on getting more specifics of what potential cuts would look like. While I understand the need for information, at some point the need for information becomes dangerously close to micro-management. I particularly thought we as a board (and I include myself in this statement) were doing this with regards to the building budgets and the IMC Paraprofessionals. If we want the building budgets cut by 5%, I don't think it really matters what those cuts are. We have to trust the administration to make the right decisions for their buildings. If we cut 2 paraprofessional we have to trust that Administration will utilize the remaining staff in the best manner possible. I don't feel I have the expertise to tell them where to make those cuts or which buildings to place staff in. They are the educational professionals and we have to respect their ability to make sound judgements. I will try to stay more cognizant of this in the future.
Lastly, next week is our regularly scheduled meeting and we will be discussing the topic of race relations. I know that with the press coverage we have received in the past 2 weeks this is a hot topic. I hope that we can have a thoughtful, informative and productive conversation. I don't think any single person has all the answers, but hopefully we can raise awareness, open the lines of communication and begin working on solutions. Our schools need to be a safe haven for the students and if 1 student feels it is not a safe place then we need to work to make it a safer place.
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You really need to FREEZE or CUT all district staff salaries and benefits (inluding teachers). Period. Your largest expenditure is in personnel costs. That is the only way to chip away at your long term deficits.
ReplyDeleteWhy don't public sector employees have to feel the same pain that the private sector employees have had to? Many people have taken pay cuts or worse, have been laid off. Even other public sector employees like Dane County employees have taken cuts? DO NOT be pushed around by the teacher's union. Do the right thing for our children and make all district staff understand that they too must make sacrifices.
I don't think that anyone on the school board has the guts to make this tough decision and it's unfortunate. Due to your (the school board as a whole) lack of leadership and vision, kids in Cottage Grove are going to suffer the most. And that's the real tragedy here.
Keep up the excellent work Jason. Thank you for not asking the administration to spend significant amounts of their time to show what a $25K cut might look like. It would look like less. Similar to if the food budget of a family was cut by 5% They would still sit down for meals. Tough for the family to predict which meals and what size portions would be and on what days. However, a family make it work.
ReplyDeleteToo bad Maywood just wasn't closed and all of this extra cutting would have been a moot point. These issues have been discussed forever. I think the Board needs to stop "gathering more information" and just make the tough decisions you were elected to make. Great job to you, Jason, Peter Sobol and Jill List.
ReplyDeletePoint #1 How quickly some of the public can forget that around 1993, a law called the QEO was put into place to limit teacher salaries. Many public members thought it was great and many teachers did not. It is this law that has severly restricted and limited raises as well as total compensation for teachers for the last 15 years. Never mind the limit it has had on the families of teachers. During about a decade of that time, economic times, including compensation packages, were between fantastic to excellent for both private and public sector employees.
ReplyDeletePOINT #2 if you have been following along, the school board has decided some District employees will be losing their job and are being laid off.
so gathering information is a bad thing??? Shouldnt tough decisions be made with the most information and research possible?
ReplyDeleteTo the uninformed person re: public sector employees not taking pay cuts. All state UW and many municipal employees across the state are taking furloughs and frozen salaries. The only place it seems they are not mandates is in our schools. The Unions for teachers are far more powerful than any other public sector unions I guess.
ReplyDelete"so gathering information is a bad thing??? Shouldn’t tough decisions be made with the most information and research possible?"
ReplyDeleteHaving information and being able to make a decision with that information are 2 completely different topics. The administration has done yeoman’s work on research and information gathering, specifically around the budget and the Maywood/Winnequah consolidation. In my opinion stating that you need more information is a cope out for not wanting to make the tough decisions. It is very easy to say I need more information and without it I feel I cannot vote on a specific measure.
Did the administration provide us with all of the information they had? I would venture to say no, but only because we did not hear the conversations that they had as they compiled the information into the packets that we received. I am sure that some pieces of information or rationale where stated verbally and so we missed out on those. Instead we got the most relevant and important pieces of information that the administration discussed. The opportunity for us as a board to gather any pieces we felt was missing was thru the question and answer sessions that we had with the administrators. They too attended all of the budget meetings and stood up and answered our questions.
If after all of that anyone felt they still did not have enough information then they were looking for a reason not to have to vote in my opinion. Does any board member like that we have to vote on these tough issues? NO! However, this is what we are elected to do. The biggest single source of frustration for me with this board is the inability or unwillingness to act on the hard decisions. Two particular items that emphasize this point are the lack of budget cuts since we are about $190k short of our stated deficit of $1M and the fact that we voted not to keep Maywood open or closed, but that we delayed having to make the decision.
Sometimes too much information gives you paralysis by analysis.
Jason - Your last comment should be "front page news" on your blog so more people can see it. Just my two cents. :)
ReplyDelete