Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Big shoe dropping

The HI covers the district's budget reduction process here.  I have to say the process has been outstandingly well run, with a careful process design and excellent collaboration and information provided by the administrative team.  If you want to see the ranked list of proposed reduction you can find it here.

As it stands we need to cut $1.2M.  A line drawn through the chart at that point falls just above the 4th grade string program.  But don't cheer about that - its hard to see much of the rest of the list surviving next year if things don't change.

The top of the list starts with "easy" things, including reductions in transportation and custodial services, administrative and infrastructure spending, but quickly moves on to support staff reductions and teacher workload increases.   Teachers are going to have significantly less time to provide the individual attention that  is key to reaching many students.

Regardless of how the details of the final result the district will be losing things of significant value.

3 comments:

Jeff Simpson said...

As someone who is affected directly by the cuts in transportation i am not sure how that is an "easy" cut. I get why its being cut, BUT I dont get why I had to pay for yars and years for these services for everyone else's kids now we can no longer afford them?

My first grader will now be expected to walk a good mile plus to school? that in my mind is not an easy cut. How long until we end bus service altogether??

Peter Sobol said...

That is why I put "easy" in quotes. All of those things have short term consequences and long term negative impact.

presterjon76 said...

The middle school I work at in Madison has had it's transportation hit several times since I've started working here. It's one of those things that seems small but has a profound impact that the public doesn't appreciate until it hits them. I'm not thrilled about my 6th graders having to walk 2.5 miles, either, and this is all going to get *much* worse unless the state's school funding formula changes. Soon.