Alternatives Floated To Teacher Cuts

Schools ​“Budget Mitigation Committee” gets down to work.

The Budget Mitigation Committee, a 15-member panel of parents, teachers, administrators, board members, paraprofessionals and students, reached those conclusions at its Thursday afternoon meeting at the district’s Meadow Street headquarters.

After protests and walkouts over the planned reduction of 53 teaching positions, the school board hastily assembled the committee membership last week (two months after its creation). The board president, Darnell Goldson, asked for help in closing next year’s massive deficit.

When the fiscal year begins in nine days, Superintendent Carol Birks says the district will be on track to spend roughly $30 million more than it has, although $11 million in grants will likely come through soon to reduce that shortfall by a third.

To close the rest of the gap, Superintendent Birks had previously proposed eliminating up to 172 teaching positions. She put part of that plan into effect earlier this month when 53 teachers were told their positions would no longer exist and they would need to apply for jobs at other buildings, which officials said would save $3.7 million.

In a close vote, more than half of the Budget Mitigation Committee said that hadn’t been the right way to start. As they threw out other suggestions, they told the Board of Education to put a stop to the involuntary transfers — at least, for now.

“Problematic Process”

Near the end of Thursday’s meting, Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, the school board’s secretary, asked the committee for its support in permanently rejecting this group of 53 proposed involuntary transfers. She said the process had been ​“problematic.”

“We would recommend that these specific 53 involuntary transfers be permanently rejected, based on the problematic process used to identify these individuals and the inadequate understanding of the implications for children’s learning,” she read from a prepared statement. ​“This does not necessarily mean that involuntary transfers will not be recommended as a budget mitigation tool, but any such transfers need to be made based on transparent criteria, with consideration given to seniority, through a fair and informed process.”

Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans objected to calling it ​“problematic.”

Though she’d already explained the process for picking the 53 teachers at the beginning of the meeting, she said she wanted to go through it again. She said it was ​“unfair” to find fault with the process if she couldn’t explain it ​“thoroughly” now.

But the fact that the administration was explaining itself only now was the problem, said Sonya-Marie Atkinson, a parent on the committee. She said staff weren’t clued in until the cuts were already happening to them.

Even now, the truth about who decided what positions to cut remains hazy. Donna Aiello, an assistant principal at Worthington Hooker School, said some principals are saying they decided which positions to forgo, while others are saying the cuts were forced on them.

Indeed, after the meeting, Redd-Hannans said that at least one principal had made a ​“counter-proposal” that the administration is now considering.

But why would a principal do that if they’d agreed with the plan in the first place? she was asked.

“I shouldn’t call it a ​‘counter-proposal,’” she said. ​“They’re saying, ​‘Well, maybe I don’t want to give up a teacher, but I can give up something else.’ Initially, we looked across the board at all their staff, so they’re looking at their instructional programming.”

But they were now offering to give up something else, compared to what? The district’s idea of what their school needed to live without, based on maximizing class sizes?

“There’s no district plan. I want to be clear, there’s no district plan,” Redd-Hannans said. ​“No one willingly wants to give up anything. If you have a deluxe cable package you don’t want to give that up to downsize. But our school leaders recognize the state of the district and our financial constraints at this time. They are doing their best to help mitigate the budget.”

After a pitched debate about the accuracy of calling the process ​“problematic,” Jamell Cotto, a former board member now co-charing the committee, asked for a show of hands.

By a 6‑to‑4 vote, with a few abstentions, the committee recommended telling the board to permanently reverse this combination of 53 involuntary transfers.

Alternatives On The Table

Figuring out what to cut instead would be a longer discussion, said the committee’s other co-chair, Jill Kelly, an ESUMS parent. Over the last week, she had identified seven expenditures that she thought the district could give up, along with forty-four other suggestions that needed more research.

While the committee didn’t take up-or-down votes on any of those, the bulk of Thursday’s meeting was spent seconding and expanding the list. Here are some highlights:

• Push for furloughs. In the past, city officials have estimated that the district could save about $650,000 for each furlough day. But the teachers union’s leadership has wanted a no-layoff guarantee to consider reopening their contract. ​“You’re negotiating with each union,” said Michael Gormany, the city’s budget director. ​“Each one wants something back to take furlough days. You have to make sure that what the union wants back is affordable. That’s where the negotiations sometimes stall.”
• Reroute buses. Last school year, the district spent $19.2 million on busing students to and from district schools, including $4.6 million on smaller rides for special-education students and $75,000 for suburban students attending inter-district magnet schools. ​“We’ve been running too many routes,” Jackson-McArthur said. ​“New Haven is seen as a place where you get whatever you want. Sometimes, you say, ​‘You can’t,’ as long as everyone is getting to school safely.” Atkinson also proposed giving high schoolers passes for public transit, and Kelly proposed looking into cutting preschool transportation.
• Bring special-education services in-house. Last school year, the district spent $17.2 million on tuition for out-of-district placements, plus another $3.6 million for the transportation to get there. Jackson-McArthur warned that the district needed to take a close look at its legal responsibilities before making any changes, but she said it should be an important follow-up conversation.
• Freeze all new contracts and review old ones. Last school year, the district spent close to $38.5 million on professional-services agreements, primarily for curriculum development, training sessions and student programming. The vast majority of that, close to 90 cents on every contracted dollar, is funded by grants. Kelly said the district needed to pay particularly close attention to its ​“consultant agreements and technology contracts.”
• Place ​“reasonable limits” on overtime. Last school year, the district spent $519,000 for security guards and $748,394 for custodians who worked beyond their allotted hours. In the past, school officials said they didn’t have enough security guards to run a second shift for after-school programs and weekend events. Will Clark, the former chief operating officer, also used to point out that, each time guards check for break-ins on the weekends, the union contract, as negotiated by the city, requires four hours of pay for each callback, even if it’s a false alarm.

Stop hiring new positions for Central Office. The district currently has a job opening for a chief of talent, with an annual salary of $165,000, that has been up since August 2018. ​“Close the posting,” Kelly wrote. Atkinson also proposed eliminating two of the three assistant superintendents of instructional leadership, saying the deputy superintendent and the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction could take on the work.Renegotiate with Elm City Montessori School (ECMS). Under state law, after approving the local charter renewal, the district owes ECMS the same amount that it allocated per pupil two years prior. In the past, the district made up much of that dollar figure through in-kind support (in the form of unionized teachers and support staff, school lunches, and, most importantly, rent and utilities for a Quinnipiac Avenue building). But next year, after ECMS moved to Blake Street, the district will have to hand over much more cash. At this week’s Finance & Operations Committee meeting, ECMS was up for a $1.1 million payment.Find a volunteer to administer the climate survey. This school year, the district paid $50,000 to Panorama Education, Inc., the only company that replied to a request for proposals, to collect state-mandated feedback from parents, students, teachers and staff. (In recent years, those results had been kept secret anyway, until the district started posting them online after the Independent filed a public-records request.) ​“Yale is here,” said Leslie Blatteau, a teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy. ​“There’s gotta be somebody who’d do this for less or nothing.”Review mileage reimbursements. Last school year, the district spent $622,567 on mileage. In the past, the district has also lumped the athletic department’s spending on buses to away games, which accounts for about $325,000, into this line-item. Jones said that the city is auditing teacher mileage. ​“We are going to put more controls on it,” he said. ​“The way it is being reported is not correct.”Cap legal services hourly rate at $300 an hour. Last school year, the district racked up $384,367 for lawyers. The hourly rate currently ranges between $190 for an associate at Berchem Moses to $220 for anyone at W. Martyn Philpot’s firm to $410 for a partner at Shipman & Goodwin. Daryl Jones, the city’s controller, added that corporation counsel will also dedicate one of its attorneys to school matters.Reduce the costs of conferences and meetings. Last school, year, the district spent $17,336 on business travel and $10,584 on professional meetings.

Cut back on standardized testing. Last school year, the district spent $108,149 on testing materials. Blatteau said the district should stop administering the PSAT to high school freshmen. ​“There are many other, more effective ways that students can prepare for the SAT than sitting through a test that they’re unprepared for in 9th grade,” she said. ​“I’ve seen students put their head down an hour in. This is money that we’re spending for students to feel demoralized and unprepared because they haven’t learned what they’re supposed to learn yet.” Atkinson added the district should stop giving the pre-PSAT, known as ReadiStep, to middle-schoolers, too.

At the end of the meeting, Kelly suggested that they turn over all the ideas (including another set of personnel cuts that Atkinson had developed) as hints of what could come next if the board wants the committee to continue meeting.

“I’m going to submit these, almost as exhibits,” Kelly said. ​“We’ll throw them at the board and say, ​‘This is what we did. What do you want to do next?’”