Sixty teachers and 190 employees in all face layoffs next school year as the district grapples with a $14.6 million budget gap. The challenge, according to the mayor: Find smart cuts that don’t hold back the city’s nascent school reform drive.
The news of layoffs next year comes on the heels of the mayor’s announcement that an unspecified number of school and city staff will lose their jobs this school year as the city tries to close a $5.5 million budget gap for the fiscal year ending July 1.
Melissa Bailey Photo
Chief Operating Officer Will Clark (pictured above) announced the 190 possible layoffs as he presented the school board’s proposed budget for the next fiscal year. The proposal assumes the district will would be flat-funded from the city’s general fund at $173 million for the third year in a row. The total budget, including grants, would be $370 million, a $5.6 million decrease over last year.
The biggest hole in the budget is left by $10 million in federal stimulus dollars that the district received last year and will not be renewed.
To fill that gap, Clark called for laying off 60 teachers, 10 administrators, 10 daycare workers, 40 clerical/security workers, 50 paraprofessionals, 20 managers and an unspecified number of custodians and part-time employees for a savings of over $11 million. Another $3.5 million in cuts would come through non-personnel items such as energy costs.
Those layoffs would come on top of a wave of immediate layoffs planned for this fiscal year, expected to hit by the end of the mont.
In presenting the next fiscal year’s spending plan, the district for the first time released a budget that shows how resources are allocated school by school, down to the salaries of each teacher and administrator.
The new way of budgeting aims to increase transparency. The document swelled to 502 pages this year from about 60 last year.
Click here to read the budget.
In a departure from tradition, where board members approved the budget just days after seeing it and with no opportunity for public input, the board did not vote on the budget when it was presented at Monday’s Board of Education meeting. Board members plan to review the material and vote on it at their next meeting on Feb. 28 at 5:30 p.m. at 54 Meadow St. Members of the public can weigh in on the spending proposal at that time.
If the 60 teacher layoffs become reality, they would be the first in Superintendent Reggie Mayo’s 20-year tenure, according to the schools chief. In past years, the district has taken advantage of the 75 to 100 teachers who leave the district each year of their own accord to achieve savings through attrition.
Attrition will not be enough to balance next year’s budget, Clark said.
Clark said his budget already accounts for a certain number of teachers leaving through attrition; the 60 layoffs would be on top of that base number, he said.
The district is looking to save $3.36 million by eliminating the 60 teaching positions, according to the budget. Check out page 362 of the budget for a list of the projected savings from layoffs in each school union.
The cuts amount to over 190 layoffs and a savings of $11,085,000.
Clark cautioned that the cuts are not set in stone.
“I’m not necessarily saying that there will be 190 layoffs immediately,” he said. He said the district would seek other funding sources to avoid that outcome.
Last year, when the district was denied a $3 million request in extra city funds, it ended up digging out of the hole by winning $10 million in federal stimulus money.
Now that stimulus money is gone. The mayor said he is glad to hear that President Obama will be opening a third round of the Race To The Top initiative, releasing competitive grants directly to school districts. New Haven and Connecticut lost out in the two prior rounds.
Board member Selase Williams said he will be praying for federal help to balance the budget.
Several of his colleagues praised the format of the new budget.
The budget lists the salaries for all special fund and general fund employees; central office staff are split up into three categories and listed on pages 332, 338 and 345.
“This is the first budget that I feel that I’ve been able to follow clearly,” said board President Carlos Torre, taking a first peek at the document Monday.
Monday’s budget talk came days before school officials are set to head to Denver for a national education conference, where Superintendent Reggie Mayo and several New Haven school officials were chosen to present on New Haven’s school reform model. The city is amid the first year of a five-year plan to close the achievement gap, cut the dropout rate in half and give kids the chance to go to college.
In his State of the City speech, Mayor John DeStefano said that despite tough budget times, the city will steam ahead with its school reform effort.
Will that be possible, given the cuts proposed Monday?
“That’s something that will have to be worked out between now and August by the superintendent,” DeStefano (pictured) replied in an interview. “I think it’s possible, and I think it’s also the challenge that exists between now and August.”
Will the school reform drive suffer?
“I suppose that will depend on where the cuts are taken, and to the extent that there are cuts, I think the superintendent is focused on the goals of school change.”
The mayor said cuts to classroom staff might be avoided if the city’s unions endorse other budget-cutting moves he’s been pushing for. The city is negotiating with 13 unions whose contracts have expired and two more (police and fire) that expire on June 30.
DeStefano is aggressively pursuing privatizing the school custodial force, which he claims would save $6 million per year. He has also publicly called on city workers to scale back pension benefits.
The threat of layoffs in the schools “makes clear the whole point of how we clean our schools, how we compensate our employees in terms of health care and pensions, more clearly identify as the kinds of reductions in expenses that could reduce the budget and at the same time not compromise the academic performance of kids in our schools,” DeStefano said.
DeStefano met over the weekend with the heads of city unions and offered several ideas for pension reform.
DeStefano said the meeting had “no resolution.” No further meetings have been scheduled.