LPS budget cuts include 100 teacher positions

Board: Sad, hard but necessary

Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Feb. 4, 2010, Villager)

LITTLETON — Sunken heads, sighs, moist eyes, apologies to nobody in particular.
These were the sobering sentiments on the dais at the Jan. 28 Littleton Public Schools Board of Education meeting.

The LPS Board directed central administration to arrange for about 100 teacher positions –58 classroom teachers – to be cut from the district for next year. This represents about 10 percent of the district workforce.

“For so long we've done more with less, and now we're at a point where we're going to do less with less,” said Board member Renee Howell. “There's only so long you can maintain that. It's just distasteful that we're at this level. This wasn't the top of the list of things to do. This is grovelling down at the bottom.

The district needs to cut $7.5 million from this year's budget for the 2010-11 school year. Although the Board approves the budget in May and June, principals start working on individual school budgets in February.

The district had to cut $6 million combined the previous two years in response to declining enrollment and to the recession. In the last two years, the district made up some of the shortfalls by closing two elementary schools, slowing salary increases, eliminating 20 central administration and district-wide staff positions and increasing by 50 percent athletic fees. About 30 teacher positions were cut, or 3 percent of the district's workforce.

This year, central administrators plan to take salary cuts of 8 to 25 percent, and all employees will take 3 furlough days. But teachers, whose salaries make up 81 percent of the general fund budget, couldn't be exempt any more. Supplemental teachers were targeted – AVID and 14 positions for reading specialist and instructional coach. Extra money for International Baccalaureate at an elementary and middle school will be taken away.

But classroom teachers will take up the bulk of the cuts – 58 teacher positions.

Core classes at the high school might be between 30-35 students, while third, fourth and fifth grade classes could have 25-30 students. The district plans to keep as much kindergarten, first and second grade teachers to keep those grade levels low in classroom size, said Superintendent Scott Murphy.

“It's like an onion. Gradually we'll peel off the quality pieces of what LPS means to people, and we're going to get to a part where the tears start to flow,” Murphy said. “Or it's like choosing two doors: behind one is a lion and the other is a tiger.”

Every school will have at least a half-time reading specialist position, although most had a full-time reading specialist and some had more than a full-time reading specialist. Every elementary school will also have half of an instructional literacy coach position, according to district numbers.

“It works, but we have to take it apart anyway. It's really crummy,” Howell said.

This isn't the end of budget concerns, either.

The state legislature will adopt the state budget in late April or May, and cuts for LPS might increase, to $9 million. Plus, the district might get $500,000 less in revenue from local sales taxes.

“We're just shooting darts at this point” when the district figures out the final numbers, said Board President Bob Colwell.

Howell added: “This $7.5 million is the most positive we can get. It's only going to get worse.”
Further cuts are expected for the 2011-12 school year – $3 million or more forecast by the district – and federal stimulus funds and the state's Amendment 23 will run out as well.

“Everybody talking about the economy stabilizing, that's rhetoric right now,” Murphy said. “Even if the state stabilizes, we're all at a lower level. As schools, we lag by a year or two.”

Littleton's last mill levy increase is running out. Construction and maintenance are often included in mill levies, and the average age of LPS buildings are 50 years.

“Even if we had a normal budget, we would have needed to do a mill levy election. It's a cycle, and the cycle is ending,” Howell said.

During previous budget cuts, the Board maintained a policy of keeping cuts away from classrooms, but that wasn't possible anymore. Other values are still being maintained, including keeping funds separate. For instance, money from insurance reserves can't be used for the general fund, and federal stimulus dollars aren't funding continuing expenses, like teacher positions. The district's reserves were $13.1 million last June, but only $2.8 million isn't part of a particular program or fund, which can't cover a week of general operations, said Scott Myers, chief financial officer. Also in the reserves, the TABOR emergency fund, $3.6 million, can't pay for a financial collapse and has to be repaid in six months, Murphy said.

“We have more money tied up than other districts. We don't have extra cash lying around once you get rid of the designations,” Myers said.

The district's financial office received a Meritorious Budget Award for excellence from the Association of School Business Officials. The award was released in January.

“We do have a plan. We do have high expectations. This is a big dip in the road to getting there,” said Board member Mary Nichols. “We have systems in place. We're not trying to rearrange from one place. That's what we're talking about neighbors to the north and south doing that, and they're now in a world of hurt.”

The Board, staff and superintendent are still optimistic.

“People come to this district because of the potential for their children to do well, and they stay because of the depth of programs we offer” Murphy said. “We have top teachers. I'm an optimist – I hope not blindly so. I do believe we'll find a way.”

IB not getting bang for buck
Parents and students showed up in droves to the district's Jan. 14 meeting, attempting to persuade the Board to keep International Baccalaureate at Newton Middle School and Field Elementary School.

Parents had petitioned to get the recognized program in their school, and they begged to keep it.
On Jan. 28, Colwell told them they could keep it, but the district shouldn't keep putting extra money into it, and parents shouldn't find alternative ways to pay for staffing for next year because whatever they might do might not last.

The district also hasn't seen much difference in enrollment from the IB program at the schools to warrant special treatment.

“If other schools around them can do it with their normal funding, we should find a way to do it,” Colwell said.

DPS to cut services, try to keep teachers

Boasberg: School budgets expected to be down 3 percent, central services down 7 percent

Story by Joshua Cole
(originally published in Jan 28., 2010, Denver Herald-Dispatch)

As other districts are cutting teachers and slashing budgets in response to the economy, Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg assured the Board of Education that the district likely won't cut teachers, classrooms or preschool.

At study sessions and regular meetings in January, Boarsberg and other members of the central district staff presented proposals for school budgets for the 2010-11 school year. Although the district's Board plans to approve the budget in June, principals received their enrollment projections and probable budget totals in January and plan to get district approval in February.

“Our priorities are very simple. The first priority is to protect the classroom to the maximum extent possible. Number two is to give schools the flexibility to meet the needs of their students,” Boasberg said. “We feel that schools are in the best positions to meet the needs of their kids.”

Schools will see about the same number of dollars per student for 2010 than they had in 2009, but increasing costs of teachers mean that schools will have 3 percent less to buy things. Central administration budgets are expected to need a 7-9 percent cut, Boasberg said.

“We are not expecting any district-wide teacher layoffs at this point,” Boasberg said.

The district gets more money for more students and for more poor students. Districts get federal Title 1 funds for students and schools that are extremely poor. Most of the money had stayed in the central administration budget, but DPS recently increased the amount siphoned directly to schools, Boasberg said.

Schools directly control about 65 percent of the district's budget, and about 30 percent is in centrally run programs, including transportation and athletics and certain special education programs.

All principals review budgets with central administration, and schools that perform poorly on district measurements work closely with Chief Academic Officer Ana Tilton, Boasberg said.

While some support staffing is required based on a ratio of students – such as psychologists and nurses – schools are given autonomy to determine what to spend and where.

So if a school needs more teachers for English Language Learners, the school can put more of its resources into getting those teachers. Or if a school wants to reduce class size, the school can focus on regular classroom teachers more than specialists or interventionists. And if a school gets an unexpected rise in enrollment following projections or the Oct. 1 count date, a reserve fund can move money to schools, district representatives and principals explained Jan. 19.

By giving each school freedom in their budgets, accountability supposedly increases because a school can't blame the central administration for requiring things, and principals and teachers must deliberate and discuss their priorities, said Cowell Elementary Principal Thomas Elliot.

“It also makes everything clearer and cleaner in that it's all relevant to our school improvement plan, and we don't have to get to a point where we have to explain things where you have to explain things with the budget,” Elliott said.

Cowell, at Sheridan Boulevard and West 10th Avenue, has 56 percent of English Language Learners and a transient population, Elliott said, which is similar to many schools in southwest Denver. Cowell had the greatest improvement on DPS measurements in the 2008-09 school year.

DPS increased the amount of money that goes to directly to schools for poor students in 2009 from $408 to $608. But next year the amount for poor students will decrease by $60 per student to about $550. Plus, some of the newer Title 1 funds are part of the federal stimulus package, which will expire in 2012 or before

Many of the plans for the student-based budgeting, as this greater autonomy in budgeting for schools is called, came about partly due to advocacy of the Metro Organizations of People, which was formed about a decade ago and started working with the district about five years ago for more transparent, simple, school-controlled budgets. Members of the Metro Organizations for People presented their history and observations at the Jan. 19 Board study session.

“Because of your advocacy, we're in a much better place than we were two years ago, three years ago. This is an effort we need to continue,” Boasberg said.

Preschool to stay the same
More affluent families will make up the cost of preschool for other families, Boaseberg said.
The district plans to increase the cost of Early Childhood Education for higher-income families, which will make up some of the state's reduction in funding.

“We do care about our preschool programs. We decided we're not going to cut preschool programs,” Boasberg said. “We are not going to decrease preschool services for kids in poverty. The kids who have more means and have the ability to pay are going to pay the market rate. It will allow us to cover our costs.”

The district also plans to keep the same quality.

“In other districts, preschool or the second half-day of kindergarten aren't taught by teachers. Ours are taught by teachers,” Boasberg said.

Other issues

• Reserves: The district plans to take $5 million from its reserves, although by doing so the district will still keep more than 4.2 percent of its budget for its reserves.
• PERA, the teachers retirement fund: Contributions will have to increase over the next few years, but Boasberg said he has to wait to see how much of that increase will be paid for by the district or directly by teachers.
• Textbooks and curriculum are still being aligned to the new state standards and to textbook budgets, which will take three to four months to complete, Tilton said.
• Principal are being evaluated not only on school performance but also on district-led principal evaluation and staff input, which were being done in January, Boasberg said.