School district to RIF 60 employees

The Mountain Home School District will have up to 60 fewer employees when school begins next fall.

Last week, meeting in special session, the district's Board of Trustees invoked the district RIF (Reduction in Force) policy and directed Supt. Jerrie LeFevre to prepare a budget for next year based on an anticipated $1.5 million shortfall -- and that's if the legislature doesn't order any further cuts in educational spending.

LeFevre now knows how the captain of the Titanic felt. With huge gashes below the waterline of his funding sources, the ship is sinking -- and there aren't enough lifeboats.

"It's the worst financial situation we've ever faced," said 15-year school board veteran and chairman Jim Alexander. "We simply have no choice" but to cut staff and programs.

Half of the personnel lost by the district will come from the teaching staff (certified employees), the other half from aides, secretaries and maintenance personnel (classified employees).

In addition, one administrator will be cut, schools on base will see some limited consolidation, and many of the "enrichment" programs for students that the district has prided itself on and spent more than a decade building, will be eliminated.

The problems arise from local, state and federal issues that have impacted the school district, which is the 13th largest in the state in terms of students, but ranks 103rd in the state in terms of property values to pay for local education.

The district currently is at its maximum levy, and no one on the school board believes taxpayers are in a position or mood to approve any special override levy to raise property taxes. That makes federal and state sources of revenue crucial to the district's budget, and funding from those sources continues to be cut.

At the local level, the school board's decision last year to adopt a "negative funds" budget, rather than make any major cuts in staff and programs, has come back to haunt them.

The board had hoped that the economy would turn around and the legislature would make up the $500,000 budgeted shortfall. Neither happened, so the board will have to cover that loss in next year's budget. And despite that red ink budget the district still had to cut 22 employees from the district for this year, the bulk of whom were lost through attrition (retiring or moving on to other districts).

But in planning for next year's budget, Supt. LeFevre said he expects very few teachers to retire or move on to other districts.

"Some, looking at their investments in the stock market, have decided not to retire right now. Others are realizing that if they move to some other district, that they'll be low man on the seniority pole, and those other districts are facing the same sort of decisions we are."

So the painful process of having to fire employees -- by not offering them contracts for next year -- will have to begin at the end of school this year.

Who will go has -- except for one administrator -- not been determined, yet.

Under the district's RIF policy a team of district officials and Mountain Home Education Association officials will sit down together to determine how and where cuts will be made, but the bulk of those who won't be offered contracts probably will fall under the "last hired, first fired" principle, LeFevre said.

In addition, it is almost certain LeFevre will recommend a salary freeze when he submits his initial budget proposals to the board at the end of this month.

At the state funding level, two factors have resulted in losses in revenue.

First have been the holdbacks ordered by the state during the last year.

Second is the declining enrollment in the district -- much of it occurring on the base schools, where changes last year in the 366th Wing's structure have resulted in a demographic of younger personnel on base who do not have school-age children.

State funds are tied to the number of students attending classes in the district, and this year the district is down nearly 150 students, half of them on base schools.

Finally, the district is looking at major cuts in federal funding, in particular the Impact Aid money that represents roughly ten percent of the district's budget.

Impact Aid money is paid to school districts for students whose parents fall into one or more of several classifications, which locally is almost entirely the classification of military personnel.

Students of personnel that live on base are termed "Military A" dependents, while those of personnel who live off base are "Military B" students.

The money is designed to make up for lack of property taxes paid by personnel who live on base, and for the "B" students, the fact the military personnel have access to base BX facilities that do not generate sales tax revenue, and because, in both cases, some of the personnel do not pay state income taxes either, listing some other state as the official "home."

Under President Bush's proposed budget, funding for all "B" students (which is one-fifth that for "A" students), would be cut entirely, and funding for the "Military A" students would be axed approximately 12.5 percent (some figures floated by the administration have it as high as 14 percent).

That proposal by the president would cost the district nearly $600,000.

The combination of all those factors mean, excluding any further cuts from the legislature or holdbacks from the governor's office, that the district must trim $1.5 million from its budget.

"Unfortunately, unlike the federal government," Alexander said, "we can't just print money to pay for things."

To accomplish that, LeFevre anticipates cutting approximately 30 teaching positions. Between salaries and the district's share of employee benefits, plus district contributions to FICA and Workmen's Compensation Insurance, each teaching position costs the district an average of about $50,000. LeFevre is the highest-paid employee of the district, at $101,689 a year. Building administrators range from a high of $85,000 to a low of $57,000, with the average administrator salary coming in as just over $69,000.

The range and average for classified staff was not immediately available, but they usually are paid significantly less than the average for teachers, whose salaries range from a high of $58,500 to a low of $25,000 (the state-required minimum). The numbers vary based on education, experience and length of contract. Alexander noted when the state ordered the minimum salary (for a teacher fresh out of school) raised from $22,000 to $25,000, "they didn't actually fund the increase," throwing yet another burden on local taxpayers. "They're just shifting taxes down to the local property taxpayer," he charged.

One administrator in the district also will be cut and others moved around in what LeFevre admits is going to be a severe case of "musical chairs" among administrators and teachers in order to make sure staffing matches attendance and programs. The lost administrative position, which will save about $70,000, will come from the base schools, where Liberty Elementary and the Base Primary school will be administratively consolidated. In addition, kitchen services will be combined there. The district is not looking at closing another base school -- yet -- as it did last year, although if enrollment on base continues to decline it may be necessary in future years. But some classrooms may be mothballed.

The remaining savings will come by cutting supplies, some services currently contracted by the district, the equivalent of 25-30 full-time positions from the classified staff (a significant number of whom are only part-time employees), and eliminating some assistant coaching positions.

Overall, between certified and classified staff, the district will lose approximately 12 percent of its slightly more than 500 employees (279 teachers, 13 administrators and 203 classified staff).

But if the cuts in personnel are painful to the board and administrators, the impact on educational services being delivered to the students grieves them even more.

"Some school districts are just diploma factories," Alexander said. "We've always tried to be more than that, to genuinely provide a well-rounded education for the students, to prepare them for the next steps they take after graduation.

"But now, we're going to be going back to what we were doing in the '60s," he said.

LeFevre said the district will try to hold the line at the elementary level, so that student-to-teacher ratios do not rise. "That's the most crucial level for keeping class sizes small, so teachers have more interaction with the students," he said.

But in exchange, with 30 fewer teachers across the district, class sizes will invariably climb at the other schools, in particular the junior high and high schools.

The highly successful team-teaching middle school concept employed at Hacker Middle School, "is virtually dead," LeFevre said. Most of the "exploratory" enrichment program electives will disappear and students will return to a "home room" system, in which they largely stay in the same classroom all day.

PE and music programs at the elementary level also will face significant cuts, LeFevre predicted.

Some electives will disappear at the junior high and high school level as well.

"We'll be forced to take a hard look at the numbers" of students enrolled in each elective class, LeFevre said, "and if we can't justify it, it will go."

That may mean that the district will have to cut back on graduation requirements. Currently, the district requires ten more credits (semester classes) than the state-mandated minimum.

The result, Alexander noted, has been fewer discipline problems, a significant reduction in the drop-out rate, and more students heading on to college or other educational programs after high school.

"We're going to wind up going back to the days when kids have all the requirements they need to graduate by the end of their junior year, except for senior English and government classes, so they'll have a lot of free time on their hands, they won't be challenged like they are now, and that usually means more problems both in and out of school."

There also will probably be a dramatic increase in "pay as you play" costs for students involved in extracurricular activities, and not just sports, but after school music programs, debate, drama, etc., in which students will have to pay fees to help cover the costs of transportation to out-of-district events and other related expenses.

A number of assistant coaches in the major sports programs may have to be dropped as well, and there is an outside possibility, although unlikely at present, that some of the lesser sports may be cut. Savings there would be fairly marginal, however.

And more teachers, especially at the junior high and high school, will be asked to do double duty, teaching some classes at one school and then moving to the other school to teach other classes.

That will add considerably to some teachers' workloads, because each different class they teach requires development and maintenance of a completely different curriculum -- all of which comes at a time when federal and state laws are requiring major changes in curriculum anyway.

In addition, "in house" elementary counseling services will be cut.

"At a time when a lot of these kids are facing stresses due to the deployment of a parent, that isn't going to help," LeFevre said. Instead, the district will return to "floating" counselors who move from building to building, and relying on teachers and school administrators to take up the slack.

Details will be worked out over the next several months by administrators, teachers' union officials, department heads and staff program teams.

Cuts in supplies will force many teachers to dip into their own pockets to make up the difference. LeFevre said he estimates that teachers already spend "several hundred dollars a year, on average," out of their own pockets, to provide supplies for their students, "and I know them, they'll go even deeper (into their pockets) now."

But the salary freeze also will impact teachers significantly in terms of economics, giving them smaller pockets to dip into, LeFevre admitted.

While the district pays for health benefits for employees, staff members must pay, by payroll deductions, for benefits for their family members, and LeFevre anticipates a significant increase in health insurance costs this year. "That means, for a lot of them, even more out-of-pocket money, so they'll functionally be taking home less money."

All of those changes are expected to have a negative effect on both student and teacher morale.

"We have a lot of very dedicated staff," LeFevre noted. "But they keep being asked to give and give, and you wonder how long that will last."

"And all of this is coming at a time when the state and feds are asking us to do more with less," Alexander said. "Well, we have a lot less and we really can't do more."