Schools may have to cut personnel

School board chairman Jim Alexander says the Mountain Home School District is facing the toughest financial year since he became a member of the board 15 years ago, and cuts in personnel are possible.

Last year, in the face of state-mandated budget cutbacks, the district took the risk that the state would be able to make up the shortfall this year, and adopted a negative funds balance, projecting it would go in the red by about $500,000.

But the continuing stagnant economy means that "more money (from the state) is out of the question," Alexander admitted. "I expect to see us get about the same as last year."

So when the district begins preparing its budget for next year in the next few months, "when we look ahead, the only thing to do is cut back on staff, which flies in the face of everything we've been trying to accomplish."

Last year, the district closed one school, Stephensen Middle School on base, cut several non-certified positions in maintenance and teacher aid posts, and allowed attrition to reduce the number of teachers employed by the district. A total of 22 jobs were lost.

The cuts the district will have to make this year, Alexander said, will be even more painful. "We can probably do a lot through attrition," he said, but that means the average number of students in each classroom will probably go up.

"We try to keep the elementary (student to teacher ratios) as small as we can. And we'll continue to try and do that. "In the secondary schools, we might find that we're cutting back on some programs, and we may have to cut back on graduation requirements," if fewer teachers are available.

Although the state only requires 42 credits for graduation, several years ago the school district increased the local requirements to 52 credits.

"We're proud of that. It's a tremendous advantage for our kids who are applying to colleges. Our advanced placement and extensive vo-tech programs really help.

"But, we'll probably have to look at ways to consolidate," he said, and probably will cut back on the "enrichment" programs that have given local students that competitive edge for colleges.

And, Alexander said, the drop-out rate and discipline problems probably will go up as a result. In the past, some students had completed all their necessary credit requirements by the time they had finished their junior year.

"When we only required 42 credits, we had a lot of disciplinary problems because the kids were bored. They weren't being challenged and the drop-out rate was higher. They had too much free time to go out and get in trouble.

"We raised the graduation requirements and we don't have those problems any more. In fact, for the first time since I've been on the board, so far this year we haven't expelled a single student. When they're challenged, when they're active, when they're busy, a lot of problems begin to go away."

Alexander also credits an expanded extra-curricular program for keeping kids involved in school. Not just in athletics, either. "The debate program, the band program, the academic decathalon, the drama program, all are doing great and have a lot of kids involved."

But, he said, the board will have to look at all of those extra-curricular programs when it begins looking for places to cut the budget. "Those programs really don't cost that much, but unless we can tie funding to a position, everything will be on the table. It's too early to say exactly what we'll do, but we've already postponed rehiring our administrative staff. We usually do that in January, and I don't think we can cut much there, because we already did a lot of that last year when we consolidated (closed one school)."

Closing Stephensen resulted in huge overcrowding at Hacker Middle School.

And if axing programs and teaching positions have to be made, those problems could get worse and expand to other buildings as well, Alexander admitted. "I just don't know what we're going to do. It's going to be a very difficult budget process."

And while the state has cut funding to the schools, and isn't likely to increase it this year, it also has required a large number of additional programs and tests for schools to adopt. None of which it paid for, Alexander said, sharply criticizing the legislature for its "unfunded mandates."

"The state, and the federal government, are both requiring that we do more, and requiring more tests, which take time from teaching, to evaluate the new programs they're forcing on us.

"Some of those programs are good and valuable, like the Idaho Reading Inventory, which seeks to make sure all third-grade students are reading at third-grade level.

"But the way they fund these programs is by carving out money from the regular school funding. They're constantly asking us to do more with less."

And with funding increasingly being tied to performance, Alexander has concerns for the long-term future.

"We're a very unique school district. We have the highest turnover rate in the state, because of the airbase and our migrant population.

"We have a huge number of kids entering the district who don't speak English. We have to get them into a conversion curriculum. It's tough to try and meet the goal of having 90 percent of our third-graders reading at grade level, when a child comes into the second grade and doesn't even speak English. And if we don't get a grip on their language skills, it's tough to teach them."

Alexander knows the legislature won't be able to restore lost funding this year. But what they can do, he said, is stop throwing new programs and mandates at the school districts.

"Give us a chance," he said in a plea to the legislature, "to see how the one's they've already ordered us to do are working. Let's have a chance to evaluate them and see what is working and what isn't, what needs to be tinkered with and what needs to be tossed. Give us a while to stabilize things.

"Teachers have had to make a lot of changes in their curriculum in the last couple years. They've worked hard to meet all the new standards. But they can't keep asking us to do more with less" money and teaching resources.

The district has been fortunate, Alexander said, to be part of the Albertson's Foundation High Performance Schools Program. One of only 15 districts in the state accepted by the foundation for the program, the foundation has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars in the school district in recent years, ranging from funding for reading initiatives to computerized classrooms.

"I believe that has basically saved us," Alexander said, but the continuing lack of state funding is now catching up with the district, forcing the painful cuts board members don't want to make.

Furthermore, Alexander said, the funding problems for education are going to pose a long-term problem. "Our pool of potential teachers is diminishing," as fewer teachers apply from out of state and fewer students take up teaching as a profession because of the outlook for educational funding in Idaho.

One possible solution to the budget crisis, which he hopes the legislature adopts, is a proposal being put together by the state school board and administrator's associations, the Idaho Education Association (teachers' union) and officials of the state PERSI retirement program.

Under that proposal, retired teachers could be hired by school districts, either part time or full time, without jeapordizing their PERSI pension fund income and without the school districts having to pay additional PERSI costs.

"That would save us a lot of money, and get some experienced people back in the classrooms," Alexander said.