Geneva District 304 Proposes $1.36 Million In Education Fund Cuts, Public Forum This Saturday, March 6th
February 28, 2010
There was a lot to be concerned about in last Monday nights District 304 School Board meeting. As usual, this Administration goes out of its way to cloud the true financial situation and the lap dog majority of this toothless Board lets them get away with it.
Where to start with this mess.
First, there was an unusually large crowd of over one hundred people. I guess that’s what happens when someone intentionally leaks information on the proposed budget cuts to the various soon to be aggrieved parties so that they can come prepared with typewritten statements to be read aloud in the public comment portion of the meeting. The crowd itself appeared to consist largely of Western Avenue Elementary parents, there prepared to contest the leaked “Western is consolidating into Fabyan” rumor. I think much to their surprise, this turned out to not be one of the proposals, at least for now. Was this just an effort by the Administration to discredit Leslie Juby, who had previously suggested that this be studied? She appears to increasingly be a thorn in the side of the Administration, so you be the judge. Whatever the case, she should be lauded for having the courage to suggest that this be looked at.
And so the meeting began, sort of. Most of the first time attendees didn’t realize the unintentional hilarity of the standard operating procedure for Board presentations is that they are never ready to go without having to overcome some PC technical problem. This night it took our Superintendent and three other administrators to reboot a PC and fiddle around for 10 minutes or so before the Powerpoint document was presented on the screen. Here’s some free advice. Power up and get ready 15 minutes BEFORE the start of the meeting, open the Powerpoint document, put it in slideshow mode and hit the B key. Just like magic, the screen stays black until you are ready to present, at which point you hit the B key again to bring up the presentation. Apparently, the thousands of dollars spent annually on staff “Professional Development” have never included an “Intro to PC Skills for Administrators” class or a “Presentation Skills” course.
Once they got started, here is the presentation deck they went through.
Several comments from my notes on the various pages of the presentation deck.
Page 4: Continued Short and Long Range Planning: Superintendent Mutchler commenting on the several studies on efficiency and on Priorities for Educational Staffing indicated that these documents were available for review on the District website. As of Sunday afternoon, this is not true. This continues a long standing Administration tradition of saying publicly that presentations to the Board will be posted on the website, and then they do not do it. Frankly, I was surprised to find the 2010-11 Budget Proposals on the site. At least now, we know that someone there knows how to update the website, even if they intentionally fail to post everything they say they will.
Page 5: Guidelines for Reductions: The number one thing was to “Ensure Quality of Educational Programs. As we’ll soon see, with cuts to A&E programs for great students and the cuts of Special Education assistants, its tough to see how this one was met.
Page 6: Timeline: For months the Administration and Board had promised that cost reduction proposals would be coming at this meeting. Here on this slide we learn that the proposals only involve the Education Fund. Operations and Maintenance and Transportation Budget Plans are now slated for April. As I’ve said, they fog the situation by not presenting the full financial situation of the District. They trickle out the financial bad news in dribs and drabs to suit their agenda.
Page 10 shows the Education Fund deficit of $1,293,570.
Pages 11 – 14 detail the proposed Education Budget cuts totaling $1,364,500. I’ll summarize the cuts as follows:
$390,450 in Building Budget Allocations, meaning reduced student supplies, staff professional development and capital outlays for equipment.
$35,000 in District-wide professional development funds.
$75,000 in reduced Clubs/Athletics/Committee Stipends, rolling up from combining clubs between the North and South Middle Schools, reducing 1 cheer coach per building, reduce 2 games per sport and eliminate the TOPS (mentoring and tutoring program), while at the High School, noon supervisor and study hall stipends would be reduced and modified. Meanwhile at the District Offices, they plan to reduce committee stipends by reducing the number of meetings per year, but not eliminating the committees themselves.
Elimination of the standing committees would be an interesting area to explore. As background, these committees are formed by Administrators, that then recruit teaching staff to attend, who then get paid extra per the union contract for attending. Do they seriously think a committee that meets 3 or 4 times a year is doing anything meaningful?
$385,000 in Support Staff Reductions, including elimination of 7 of 93 Special Education Assistant positions, two half time middle school and one full time high school secretarial positions, one middle school police liason position, two high school hallway supervisor positions and one Acceleration & Enrichment secretary position.
Hallway supervisors? Middle school police liason? What other unnecessary positions are on the payroll? I’d love to see organizational charts for every employee in this District posted on the District website. Since that will never happen, I guess I’d have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to be reviewed by our propagandist Communications Coordinator, who now has assumed the additional responsibilities of being the Freedom of Information Act Compliance Officer. Oh, the irony! Since the Superintendent will review and approve any requests anyway, why do we have this position and why wasn’t the responsibility assigned to the Superintendent in the first place? And elimination of 7 of 93 Special Education Assistants? I have no idea how they came up with eliminating 7 of 93, but if if your kid is in a class that needs one and doesn’t get one, there is no doubt that your kids education will be disrupted.
$479,050 in Certified Staff and Administrative Services, including 3.5 elementary school teaching and student services positions to be eliminated via attrition, eliminate one middle school part time athletic director position, one FTE at the high school to be eliminated by not rehiring part timers, and reduced hours of a discipline supervision position, a tutoring program and the assistant athletic director. At the District offices, eliminate the Acceleration and Enrichment coordinator position (with these responsibilities to be assumed by the Curriculum Office) and the Coordinator of Special Projects and Resource Procurement, a position created and funded by stimulus funds, with the idea being to free up and use the stimulus funds for other uses.
Page 16: Summary of Reductions: This was interesting in that they want credit for $1.3 million in reductions in the 2009-10 budget, but these cuts were made by the Board against the wishes of the Administration, with $1.0 Million coming from the delay put in place for the Brundige Road boondoggle that the District wasted over $500,000 on last summer!
Page 18: Summary Results of Budget Planning in 2009-10: This slide discussed possible future cuts under consideration. It was interesting to note that they mention a Facilities Study Update, which would address what to do with the empty Coultrap building, the 4th Street Administration offices and the “27 acres”, which for those new to this is an oblique reference to the Brundige Road boondoggle mentioned above. This slide also suggests an enrollment study update looking at school boundaries and class size is under consideration (of course to be done by expensive outside consultants, just like last time) Mutchler made an odd comment on this saying we are “not underutilizing any of our buildings.” This despite the equivalent of an extra elementary school in the district.
Then it was time for Board Member comments.
Matt Henry asked a couple of questions regarding stimulus funds.
Mark Grosso expressed concerns on the A&E cuts and indicated he wanted to see the 4th Street administration take cuts, which he did not see in this proposal. He commented that he still sees many questionable expenditures in the monthly bills posted online, and still doesn’t understand why the Administration doesn’t drive for even a 5% monthly reduction, which would total $750,000 in savings over the next six months.
Leslie Juby expressed concern about the impact of the proposed cuts at the elementary level, indicating that she could not support cuts to the classroom assistants, the library staff or elimination of A&E programs. She also indicated that she wants to study stipend consolidation and that consolidation of Western Avenue Elementary to Fabyan should be studied. Kudos to Leslie Juby again for standing tall and not backing down on this position.
Board President Mary Stith had several comments. She feels professional development is crucial, and believes that our teachers are in the top tier of experience, while at average or lower salaries. She commented that we need more creative solutions from the the Regional Education Office and other community resources. As for the proposed elimination of the TOPS mentoring program, she believes in mentoring and would like to see more detail around how the teaching teams would support this. Regarding the A&E cuts, she want to hear input, as she is very proud of this program and has great personal esteem for the coordinator. She also indicated she wanted to see 4th street administration cuts. President Stith also indicated that school boundary redistricting is on the table, and that there is not enough capacity at Fabyan to consolidate Western there. Boundary changes require time and planning to effectively execute district wide. She believes that the facilities study of what to do with Coultrap and the 4th St. Administration offices should be addressed first. She indicated that all schools have identities and changes to boundaries impact them and the feeling of belonging to a school for 3-4 years. She does not want to do any boundary changes for one or two years.
Kelly Nowak had just one very brief comment, that I was unable to hear, that apparently explained why she had no substantive comment on any of this.
Bill Wilson and Tim Moran had no comments either. This was a stunning failure of leadership given that these two Board members were supposedly the ones that were leading the Board’s cost reduction initiatives.
Which brought us to the public comment section of the evening. Mary Stith directed Superintendent Mutchler to capture the main questions asked and to post them with the answers under a FAQ section on the District’s website. Care to place a bet as to whether this happens?
Leading off with a lengthy written speech, a former 304 teacher, now a volunteer at the Williamsburg library, proceeded to describe in great detail a day in the life of a library volunteer and how critical the library aides are to the overall educational experience. She commented that cuts should come first from positions that do not have direct daily student contact.
Next up, a founder of GEARS, the parent advocacy group for the A&E program. She was upset about the proposed A&E coordinator and secretary cuts, calling this surprising, disheartening and short sighted. While having a great deal of respect for the Board, she was surprised that the Administration would do this and that she felt that academics should always come first.
After several different questioners, one Western Avenue parent then asked why in the last few years, Western Avenue has seen two new playgrounds, new lights, new carpets, new cabinetry and a new gym floor, questioning whether all of this was necessary. The answer was that some was preventive maintenance, some was approved in a referendum and some was a result of fire repairs.
Another man asked about the status of state payments to the District. Oberg indicated they have made one payment to date, when we should have received two by now. This man also voiced the opinion that eliminating positions and asking people to step up will certainly lead to reduced services.
A fifteen year district employee then praised the process and open communication philosophy that brought us to this point. She also suggested that the buckets of proposed savings be broken down into the individual line items and that an estimate of the number of students impacted by each line item be provided for reference so that people can understand how many students are impacted by each proposed cut. These are good suggestions that I hope the District follow up on.
Another parent commented that the benefits of A&E accrue to more students than just those in A&E, and that she’d seen this with her own children, having one in the program and the other out.
Another parent questioned what the contingency plan was if the state fails to pay 100% of what is projected, since this would increase the deficit. Oberg answered that we could look at further cuts or dip further into reserves. She said that the District does not want to go out for an rate increase referendum and that education rate increases would not be needed until 2015 if these cuts are made.
There was also a question to Mark Grosso to explain his earlier comment about 5% cuts leading to $750,000 savings in 6 months. He indicated that there are $2.5 – $3.0 million in monthly District expenditures and that an edict to cut by 5% would save $750,000 in 6 months. Oberg indicated that we are 68% of the way through the fiscal year, with payments running at 58% year to date, implying that some of this may already be occurring informally. Of course, they never review the status of the current budget publicly at the Board meeting so who would ever know?
We then went on to the individual Board member report section of the agenda. Most were routine, although Tim Moran commented on the City of Geneva tax revenues being down as 32 shops have closed, while 43 new shops have opened. He also mentioned that the Dupage library system is living on reserves and is in real financial trouble. Mary Stith commented on this Daily Herald editorial on unfunded state mandates and encouraged everyone to call their state legislators.
So where does all this leave us?
The primary function of this school district is to educate our children. As such, the place that this occurs is in the classroom. Every effort must be made to support and protect the learning that is occurring there. Unfortunately, this Administration and Board have not been diligent about controlling costs elsewhere in the District and now they feel compelled to cut certain funds and positions that directly impact classroom education. As evidence of their ongoing failures, consider the following:
They once again fail to present the full and complete financial situation this District is in, delaying further review of Transportation and Operations budgets until April.
Moran and Wilson’s pledge to have a leaner, meaner budget next year is ringing hollow so far.
They breezily approved an overly generous 3 year teacher contract last summer.
They opened Fabyan Elementary last fall in spite of the fact that District elementary enrollment growth was less than 10 students.
They still refuse to initiate a hiring freeze or a travel/seminar/convention freeze.
There were essentially no Administrative position cuts proposed.
They refuse to bid major purchases like buses, and admit that they never have.
They dismiss the use of reverse auctions, in spite of evidence they worked in St. Charles, and have gotten better results than their Purchasing Consortium.
They refuse to rein in P-Card spending.
They continue to push to build the Brundige Road boondoggle.
They refuse to even look at bidding out and possibly outsourcing transportation, food, janitorial, landscaping, snow removal and legal services, to name a few.
I’ve written about all of these, so go the archives if you want to read more.
So now the chickens are coming home to roost. With salary and benefits the major part of the budget, and with no help coming from the nearly bankrupt State of Illinois, expect that more cuts will be required as the economy continues to limp along. Next Saturday morning’s public forum at the Geneva Middle School South from 8:30 – 10:30 am will be another exercise in futility. There will be the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth from every impacted constituency, but it will be too little, too late, unless of course they decide to once again tap the reserves and pray for sunny days ahead. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?
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2 Responses to “Geneva District 304 Proposes $1.36 Million In Education Fund Cuts, Public Forum This Saturday, March 6th”
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Dave, you drip sarcasm….KEEP IT UP: “I’d love to see organizational charts for every employee in this District posted on the District website. Since that will never happen, I guess I’d have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to be reviewed by our ‘propagandist’ Communications Coordinator, who now has assumed the additional responsibilities of being the Freedom of Information Act Compliance Officer. Oh, the irony!”
Thanks for the diligent report.
Do you plan to address the assembly on Saturday?
Why bother? Everything I have to say I post here.