School Board Looks At Impacts of Layoffs and Program Cuts

For months the Board of Education spoke of possibly cutting student programming and laying off school employees as it struggles to produce next year’s budget.

At Tuesday’s budget presentation, just hours after Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed eliminating $1.5 billion in aid to local schools across New York, Superintendent Dr. Geoffrey Gordon and the district’s assistant superintendents spelled out at the board meeting in  just what cuts to programming and personnel would look like. 

“It’s very important that the community sees what the implication of these unfunded mandates are on the existing budget and existing services,” Gordon said, noting that Port Washington was one of the few districts last year in which teacher unions agreed to freeze raises.

The financials

As a starting point in the budget discussion, the district would need to spend $135,600,00 – a 6.7 percent increase over last year ­– to continue with the programming and staff levels it currently maintains, said Assistant Superintendent for Business Affairs Mary Callahan. That increase is largely from escalating pension and compensation costs and loss of federal and state funding which the district must now fund.

Possible program-staffing options include increasing class size beyond the board’s  policy limits; reducing or eliminating PEP, math resource support and technology staff development; reducing or eliminating non-mandated departments, such as the business department, at the secondary level; reducing or rotating elective courses; offering half-day pre-K and Kindergarten classes; reducing the number of students attending BOCES occupational education programs; reducing or eliminating librarians except the one mandated secondary position; and reducing or eliminating extracurricular activities, sports  and clubs.

Impact on the district

Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Dr. Nicholas Stirling discussed the impact of program cuts on the district.

Eliminating Pre-K would mean a loss of state funding and affect the neediest students. Reducing Kindergarten would increase cost to many families, widen the achievement gap and more. Cuts to art, music and library media services would affect how the district provides mandated programs.

The enrichment program was already reduced, as it now only serves grades three to six, not seven and eight. Eliminating staff at other levels would increase class size. Layoffs in the case of courses such as family and consumer science as well as science would potentially impact safety. They would also affect affect students’ ability to be as competitive as possible.

Personnel

As for whose job is a risk, think “last hired first fired,” said Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Dr. Kathleen Mooney. “New York State law governs the process of teacher layoff,” she said. “Once a decision has been made to excess and/or eliminate positions, the layoffs are governed by seniority.”

Other rules come into play, such as tenure, certification and even “bumping rights” – where about-to-be-excessed teachers with seniority in more than one tenure area can “bump” back into any prior teacher tenure area in which they have more seniority than the least senior teacher serving in that area.

 Community comments

Earlier, in the community comments portion of the meeting, Frank Russo of the Port Washington Education Association, noting that many increases were beyond the district’s control, said he hoped the district could get the budget increase down to $2.5 million.

 “It’s mind boggling,” he said of the challenge. “That’s why I was pushing for the past year and a half to freeze salaries.” He added that this would be the “only legal way to get employees to pay for their pension costs because the Constitution prohibits us from changing it in any other way.”

“I have the feeling the only thing that’s going to happen is cutting employees, hopefully mostly through attrition,” he said, adding that he hoped the district could do it in a way that wouldn’t hurt the children.

Hank Ratner noted that for years the district had been featured in Newsweek’s “America’s Best High Schools” listed, but had dropped from the ranking of 170 in 2009 to 326 in 2010.

Other thoughts

Callahan later pointed out that Port recently had three Intel scholars out of 300 in the nation. “We have a responsibility to future generation,” she said.

At the end of the meeting, Gordon said, “I am disappointed that when there are salary issues, this place is packed with different bargaining people, and when it comes to kids programs, it’s not.” That sentiment drew a round of applause in the auditorium.

School Board Member Rob Seiden agreed, though noted that some may have not been able to attend the evening meeting for family or other reasons.

“It doesn’t make sense to me why the unions would not understand that and agree to make sacrifices and not have to lay off employees,” he said. “Now is the time to step forward and [show] the character and sacrifice that is needed so that we don’t have to destroy the foundation of this school district.” 

The board will discuss the budget again on March 8, and will next meet on Feb. 15.