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School board ponders budget cuts
By ALEXANDRA CALDWELL
Article published on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 |
PINELLAS COUNTY – Of all the proposed budget cuts, the Pinellas County School Board finds the possible 2 percent pay cut the hardest to swallow.
“That’s the part of the proposal that gives me the most pause,” said board chairwoman Nancy Bostock, “and I think if there’s any possible way to avoid it or minimize it, mitigate it in some way, we need to look at that. Our options are pretty limited, but the board did put out a few ideas that we’re going to investigate.”
Due to Florida legislative budget adjustments and declining enrollment, Pinellas County faces a projected absolute loss of $27.8 million for the 2008-2009 school year.
Superintendent Clayton Wilcox and his budget team released a proposed budget April 29. The board hopes to make a quick decision, but a workshop May 1 revealed that there will be more discussion before any of the cuts are finalized.
Proposed areas for cuts
Wilcox and the budget committee have worked for months to suggest a budget that maintains the committee’s priorities: Maintain the focus on students and learning; honor the required class size reductions; uphold commitments to the arts, student activities, and career, technical and vocational education; try to maintain continued employment for the current team; continue to improve student learning; and position the district to withstand future economic downturns.
The biggest proposed cuts are to change the current work day for 1,982 hourly employees from eight hours to seven and a half hours; the salaries for all other employees would be cut by 2 percent. The proposal also calls for eliminating 147 positions, reassigning 170 positions, canceling some programs and service provider contracts, and closing an alternative school.
Bostock said they will try to keep most of the job cuts at the administrative level, and hopefully natural turnover will soften this blow.
“That’s not necessarily layoffs,” Bostock said. “We have 16,000 employees in the district and we have a fair amount of natural turnover – people moving, people retiring, staying at home for a couple of years to raise their children. We get vacancies every year. So as much as possible, the positions we reduce won’t necessarily be layoffs because we’ll take the good people that we have and transfer them into an existing position. We’ve done it before where we’ve done it without layoffs.”
The proposed budget also fully funds employees’ health insurance, whereas it usually pays 80 percent and the employees chip in the other 20 percent. The board members asked for more information about this to see if it would be better to go back to the 80-20 split and reinvest those funds into salaries. This possibly could reduce the suggested 2 percent pay cut.
No matter what, the cuts will hurt, so Bostock hopes for a swift decision.
“We hope to make some final decisions quickly because we know that this has a great impact on our employees, and we want to let them know just how bad the news is and how it’s going to affect them soon,” Bostock said. “Then they can start to accommodate it in their lives rather than later when it could have a larger impact on them.”
For many board members, this year’s cuts felt too much like the massive cuts of 1991. Board member Jane Gallucci said she feels sick that the government slashed education funding. Since it’s ultimately the board’s decision to approve the budget, sometimes she’ll wake up at night wondering what she should do.
“It’s gut-wrenching,” Gallucci said. “I mean you take 10 steps forward and 22 steps backwards. We went through this in ’91. That’s what some of us were lamenting about. And some of the positions that were cut in ’91 have never come back in the high schools.”
State funding drop takes burden home
Pinellas County taxpayers have already stepped up and supported the schools, Gallucci said, but may have to help make up for statewide losses.
“That’s more on us on the property owners in Pinellas County when they already decided to tax themselves for our referendum,” Gallucci said. “And so in my opinion, the people in Pinellas County have already stepped up to the plate. And now they’ll probably be asked again because Tallahassee hasn’t found the money for education.”
The money from the required local effort primarily stays in the county, she said, but the rest of the money raised for education goes to Tallahassee and comes back in a complicated formula called district cost referential. This is to make sure every child in Florida gets an education. But when areas like Pinellas County face declining enrollment, some of the money they’re used to getting doesn’t come back. On top of that, she added, legislators have reduced education funding statewide.
“Quite truthfully, I don’t think legislators have heard enough from people,” Gallucci said. “So we need to unite to get that message out. That message is that in the fourth-largest state in the union, we need to have a strategic direction that says that education is important. Because how else do you attract companies here if you don’t have a top-notch education system? And by decreasing funding is certainly not a way to get there.”
The School Board will hold another workshop to discuss the budget at 9 a.m. May 6 at the Administration Building, 301 Fourth St. S.W., Largo.
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Article published on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
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