Notes: School Board 5.15

The Escambia County School Board held a special workshop on May 15 at the J.E. Hall Center regarding impending budget issues and cuts. Board president Patty Hightower opened the meeting and described board members’ recent trip to Tallahassee for a legislative update given by the Florida School Board Association.

“They had no good news for us, they had nothing really positive to tell us… unfortunately they told us we still m ay be facing more cuts. Their expectation is that there might actually be a special session after the elections because there is still a declining revenue at the state. So all of these meetings that we’re having are very necessary as we prepare ourselves for some rough times,” Hightower said.

District Superintendent Jim Paul reaffirmed the board that his staff was also looking at having more cuts in the future. “We too are looking not only at this year, but at the next couple of years as well. It is very discouraging to all of us and as I mentioned before, we’ve kind of become the victim of our own successes of the past because we cut so much in order to bring the pay of our employees up. There really is very little low hanging fruit,” Paul said.

School board staff member Barbara Linker passed around a revised budget reduction plan and explained, “We’re looking at a budget reduction of $9.3 million. After that, we still have projected cost increases. I’d like to draw your attention to subtotal there, $12.26 million, that’s really been the target that we have been discussing. We have a health insurance estimated need of 3 million… When we include that, we’re looking at a total of $15.26 million,” Linker said. “The personnel planning document figure again has not changed. those recommended reductions are almost $8 million. Then down under recommended reductions, they are the same until you come to the bottom and the first change that we’re looking at is we have calculated the savings of related to the Carver-Century closure and I have calculated that very conservatively. We would be looking at a saving of $680, 439. The next item is a reduced contribution to health insurance. In our previous analysis we had a little over $400,000 for that… We can actually maintain some portion of that contribution and save more,” Linker said. She added that the board could save more than $532,000 by making middle schoolers within a mile of their schools walk instead of transporting them by bus.

School board staff member Shawn Dennis said- re-sequencing busses would save the district even more money. “Crudely, we estimate 42 elementary runs, 28 middle school runs and 35 high school runs could be removed with the re-sequencing,” Dennis said “We’ve used a very conservative calculation… our busses cost at a minimum $36,000 a year to run. When you take the cost of the driver, using just entry level salary and benefits, you take the average amount of miles those busses travel a year, you take the cost per gallon of fuel, realizing that our busses average about 5.9 miles to the gallon, take the cost associated with the work that needs to be done 10 times a year on inspections, it equates to $36,000 a year… if you divide that cost by three, because we’re using three runs, you can get the run average, or what it costs per run, we can see that each one of those runs is about $12,000… When you take 105 runs off the road , simple math, it’s $1.26 million.”

In order to achieve the savings, Dennis said the board would have to implem ent a new bus schedule that would have elementary schools starting at 7:30 a.m., middle schools at 8:30 a.m. and high schools at 9:30 a.m.

“These are the start times and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that there are huge issues associated with a change of this magnitude,” Dennis said.

“You are getting a lot of pros with this. Notwithstanding the economic benefit, 30 minutes of additional instruction time for elementary is absolutely right at the heart of what we do each and every day in our business,” he said.

Dennis also gave a presentation about how the board could save money by picking up fewer students that live in close proximity to their schools. Students currently being transported that live within two miles of their schools are called courtesy riders.

“The state legislature does not fund transportation at any level inside two miles unless there’s a hazardous walking condition, and that only applies to students K through six. Your school board rules states that we will transport inside two miles for elementary but not inside one mile. We will transport inside two miles for middle school, but not inside a mile and a half and we will not transport inside two miles for high school… What we’re proposing is to leave your elementary walk zone as it is, push the middle school walk limit out to two miles to coincide with the high school walk limit and enable us to enforce that . Seventy five percent of those 1,450 or so students that are courtesy riders are middle and high school students,” Dennis said. “Twenty busses cost over $709,000 per year. Seventy five percent of that is over $532,000.”

Dennis added that schools presently under a two tier system would remain under a two tier system.

“I’m excited because were looking outside of the box and thinking of things we hadn’t looked at before and it looks like this could generate some substantial savings,” board member Josh Bergosh said.

Bergosh asked when budgetary changes could be seen on a school board agenda. Staff replied that the tentative budget is usually prepared in July.

During the public forum, several members of the Century community pleaded for the board to reconsider its decision to close Carver Century including the town’s Mayor Freddie McCall, Irvin Stallworth and W.D. Jack Moran, who said, “I’m extremely disappointed that carver century is even being considered for closing.”

After the public forum, Board Member Claudia Brown-Curry asked Superintendent Paul several questions, including, “Mr. Paul, have you given up on Carver Century?”

To this, Paul responded, “No, I have not given up. I will say this however, it has been frustrating for me… they probably have more tech more computers per student than any other school in district, they have principal, didn’t really qualify for assistant prince but I sent one up there anyway and also had a curriculum coordinator… it has been frustrating… I personally don’t know what else I can do,“ Paul said. “What can we do to affect change academically in that school? I will never give up on any school, but it has been frustrating for me.”

Brown-Curry continued, asking, “Are there ways to make it more efficient than to close it so quickly?”

To this, Paul responded with, “The only way, financially speaking, to bring about efficiency at Carver Century right now is to bring more students into the school.”

Bergosh spoke about the difficulty of closing any school and the academic failures at the century school.

“No matter what school we Identify for closure, there’s going to be people coming out and there’s going to be an outcry,” Bergosh said. “So how do you go about picking one? You look at the one that is the most no economical to run…it’s a school that’s under utilized. It’s the most under utilized in our county and there’s some substantial savings to be had by closing it…What’s the letter grade of that school this year?”

Staff member Paul Fetsko answered “This past year, the school was an F,” adding that there had been a history of D’s and F’s at the century school.

“Look at a student going from an F school to an A school,” Bergosh said. “I don’t see that as a negative. I see that as giving a child an opportunity to be in an environment where they’ve shown the leadership to get the grade up.”

The meeting then adjourned for a 10 minute break. After the break, board members discussed pay cuts for themselves and their staff.

“There are very few people who come under our jurisdiction that we can actually impact and I’ve spoken to each of those people on our staff, knowing that it won’t make a huge impact but it’s a good faith effort on our part about reducing the salaries of Ms. West, coordinator of board affairs, Ms. Waters, and David Bryant by two percent and asking each of the board members to rebate two percent of our salary to the foundation for excellence so that we are all sharing the load,” Hightower said.

Bergosh discussed a sliding scale he would propose for pay cuts and said it should include unionized and non-unionized employees.

“It would be a 2 percent cut for all employees earning in excess of $38,000, to $45,000, 2.5 percent for those between $45,000 and $52,000 and 3 percent for everyone above it. That’s everyone, we’d shoulder it equally,” Bergosh said.

No actions were taken at the workshop. The nest board meeting is scheduled for May 20 at 5:30 p.m. at the J. E. Hall Center.