Melissa Bailey Photo
Superintendent Harries with new board member Daisy Gonzalez.
Administrators will have to start “brown-bagging it” to meetings. One person from the school district’s central office may lose his or her job. And outside groups may have to pay more to rent school gyms and theaters.
Schools Superintendent Garth Harries outlined those potential cuts Monday at the regular meeting of the school board at Career High School. He was giving an update on ongoing efforts to solve a surprise $3.5 million structural deficit in the school district’s $174.2 million “general fund” budget.
Harries, who took office in July, said he learned of the district’s budget hole right before school started. That prompted a last-minute scramble to make some quick cuts, including eliminating middle-school classrooms at Lincoln-Bassett and MicroSociety schools.
On Monday, he outlined a total of $9.5 million in cuts that the district will need to make in order to balance its budget. The reason the gap is that big is because for the past few years, the school board has been approving budgets that include a hole, along with a promise to fill that hole through a “budget initiative.”
So far this year, the district has made cuts that are projected to save $5.58 million. It is planning other cuts that will add up to $3.98 million by the time the fiscal year ends on June 30, Harries announced.
The district has saved $360,000 by not filling vacant school-level administrative jobs such as assistant principals, Harries reported. It has saved $860,000 in teacher salaries by eliminating positions at Lincoln-Bassett and MicroSociety and not filling other open jobs. (No teachers lost their jobs; they got reassigned.)
The school district is projected to save $286,700 in central office salaries through an ongoing reorganization of central office staff, Harries said. Savings came in part through the recent resignation of its human resources director, Jim Prunty. Harries appointed curriculum specialist Donna Aiello as the interim HR chief and reassigned her duties to other existing staff. He said there are no plans to fill Aiello’s old job at the moment. Just how the HR duties end up being allocated will depend on the reorganization, he said.
Harries projected the district would save another $107,500 through “senior leadership reorganization.” That means someone in central office — defined as executive management, administration or the city management union — may lose his or her job, he said.
Administrators who stay will face cuts to “non-essential” services, such as travel budgets and food. That means administrators will have to “brown-bag it” to meetings instead of having their lunches paid for by the school district. Harries said schools may have to cut back on field trips, too. He projected these types of cuts will save $600,000.
Another change concerns outside groups that rent out school gyms and auditoriums. Right now, the amount they pay varies widely based on school, the type of event, the group, and that group’s history with the school district, according to Harries. Some groups, such as Gold’s Gym, pay. Others, such as education-themed not-for-profits, don’t.
When the district charges a fee, it’s based on the cost of labor and the wear and tear to the building, according to schools Chief Operating Officer Will Clark. There’s no extra fee for the use of the space, he said. Often, the district still loses money, because of the cost of paying overtime for custodians to keep the building open and clean up, he said.
The district still wants to have a range of different fees for private and not-for-profit groups, and for educational versus commercial events. The district won’t rule out letting some groups use the spaces for free. But fees will go up, he said.
“We do want the schools to be community resources,” Harries said, but “we want to make sure we’re covering our costs.”
Harries projected $100,000 in new revenue from changing the permit fee structure effective Jan. 1. He said he will propose specific changes to the school board in an upcoming meeting.
Among other projected cost-savings:
• $900,000 by shifting staff from “general fund” (city and state taxpayer money) to “special fund” (other grants).
• $1.5 million in savings through covering some existing school services with money from related “reform” grants.
• $1.5 million in expected savings in the food services program from “increased meal claims, reduced costs and balanced staffing.” Even with those cuts, the program will still run a $2 million deficit.
• $1 million in attrition, achieved in part by replacing retiring teachers with lower-paid rookies.
To help get a handle on the schools’ finances, Harries announced two steps.
First, he recommended, and the board approved, hiring a search firm from New York to help search for a new “chief financial officer.” Harries created the job through “reorganization”—read more about that here.
The school board approved hiring a firm called Harris, Rand and Lusk for $37,500 to perform the search. The contract is being paid for by a grant through the Buck Foundation, Harries said. He said the firm has experience searching for chief financial officers in the public sphere, not limited to the education field.
Second, Harries announced that the district will hire another outside firm to analyze the schools budget and help create a one-year and a five-year strategic budget plan. The effort will be paid for through the $53 million Teacher Incentive Fund grant New Haven received from the Obama administration last year to improve the way the school district grades, rewards and develops educators, Harries said.
A Talent Council — comprised of three teachers and three administrators, all picked by their unions — is determining how all the $53 million is being spent. The panel has received proposals from four different firms — Alvarez & Marshal Public Sector Services, LLC; Augenblick, Palaich and Asociates, Inc.; District Management Council; and Education Resource Strategies — to conduct the audit and strategic financial help. Proposals range from $255,000 to $610,000, according to a document Harries distributed Monday. The chosen firm will help the district “assess its current budget processes and systems”; plan a budget for 2014 – 15, and develop budget processes that help pay for the district’s school reform effort in the long term.
The $53 million grant, awarded over a year ago, is just recently beginning to trickle out. The first main expenditure came in September, when the district spent $160,000 to hire the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education to run a teacher leader boot camp.
Also Monday, the school board approved using that same grant to hire ReVision Learning Partnership, LLC to “calibrate” the district’s teacher evaluation system. The district will pay the firm about $200,000 for two purposes: To serve as outside validators, observing and grading teachers who rate at the top and bottom of the district’s five-point teacher evaluation scale; and to train administrators in how to conduct evaluations.