Escambia County School Board Members decided to table a decision regarding the district’s budget and proposed personnel cuts before a capacity crowd at the J.E Hall Center during a special meeting last night. The board will hold a workshop at 11:30 a.m. on May 15 at a location to be determined to further discuss the cutback plan. The next board meeting will be May 20.
The Wednesday meeting was called to order at 4:25 p.m. and a public forum was the first order of business after the agenda was approved.
“It looks to me, and I know I’m not the first person saying this, it seems that some of the budget cuts that are being talked about are being made in areas that most specifically affect the kids as opposed to cuts, like Santa Rosa County, that are far away from school based employees,” said Pensacola resident Gene Mitchell.
Lillian Robertson came to speak for her school, Carver-Century, and defend it from possible closure by the board.”We understand you are seriously considering closing Carver century. We’re more than a school there, we do much more than teach the three R’s,” Robertson said. “We’re a home for the children. We deal with lots of needy, needy children. We provide them a family.”
Madonna Jackson-Williams, who works as an OJT coordinator at Pine Forest High School compared school board members to naïve animals, saying, “I’ve been watching this now for the last several meetings and all I can think of is a bunch of little puppies with a chew toy, and the chew toy represents the children in this district, and now your to the point that your tearing up the chew toy and eventually its going to break. So please consider what is best for our children.”
Area resident Linda Holt warned board members that they were being watched closely by their constituents, saying, “You better start looking deep. Elections are coming up and people are really not happy.”
Schools Superintendent Jim Paul rebutted the comment and blamed voter discontent on misinformation that appeared in local media. “The citizens aren’t only ones that area upset and it has very little to do with the election,” Paul said. “The information that has been placed in the newspaper that [the union] has provided to the [local media] was wrong. It has errors in it. How are we to work collaboratively, or how are the citizens of Escambia county supposed to believe what is printed in the newspaper or in the media when those errors are there and it was believed whole heartedly? All the positions that they recommended for cuts were wrong.”
From there, the meeting turned to a round table-type discussion where every board member was given ample time to give their anecdotal wisdom regarding the budgeting process.
“We all know that the bottom line is that we’ve got to cut,” said board member Patty Hightower. “The blame does not lie in this district. There’s an unfortunate economic situation. There are things that might have been done at a different level other than here that could have helped. It wasn’t done. That’s nobody’s fault in this room. What we as board members are tasked with is balancing the budget. It’s a difficult thing to figure out what cog you can take out and still keep the machine rolling.”
Board member Jeff Bergosh said, “When you have to cut a budget as big as ours, its complex but at the heart of it, its unrealistic to think that some employees aren’t going to be affected.”
Board member Claudia Brown-Curry said, “I’ve really searched my heart and when we come to the [Personnel Planning Document], I just want you all to know, in the audience, that it’s nothing personal from Mrs. Claudia Brown-Curry. The only thing that I’m doing is making sure that we do the best for every child.”
District 2 Representative Gerald Boone said, “I’ve examined a lot of things, lost sleep and this is hard and I still think there are people out there who think this should be an easy task and its not. I was one of those people. As a school teacher for years we kept thinking ‘Surely they can do something about raising our salaries,’ but I am on the other side of the fence now and with everything that I’m having to look at and soul search and say, ‘what else can we do to convince the public?’ It is certainly no easy task. It is certainly hard and when its over with everybody is not going to be walking around with a big smile on their face.”
Board member Pete Gindl added, “We will live through this and we will come out smarter.”
The meeting was adjourned at 6 p.m.