When we elect School Board Trustees, aren’t they supposed to oversee the Superintendent and make sure that the values of the community are represented..
Shouldn’t the Superintendent and the Board of Trustees be working together to make sure that the core services provided by the District remain intact and that the classroom education of the community’s students is not compromised, even in times of a recession when everyone is forced to make prudent modifications in their spending habits and eliminate those things they can live without?
When the recent levy failed, shouldn't the Board of Trustees and the Superintendent have been able to see that the their priorities were not in line with the priorities of the community?
Evidently not, or they simply didn't care. Mary Vagner’s first reaction after the shock of having the levy fail, was to lash out at the community and threatened to punish the community and our children by cutting essential services and firing up to forty teachers.
Those of us who have taken conflict resolution classes, recognized Vagner’s behavior as assuming the child ego mode, characterized by tantrums, has to have everything one’s own way, threats, etc.
Is our School District Superintendent incapable of assuming the Adult Ego Mode when trying to work out differences between her priorities and the community’s priorities.
If that is the case, do we, her employers have to put up with threats to cut essential services and the firing of teachers.
I realize that cutting the 2009-2010 School District Budget will take a lot of soul searching and hard work to bring the budget in line with available funding. The first thing that we all ought to be able to agree on is that core services and teachers are the last considerations for cuts, not the first.
So, where do we start? I think the community has to get involved in answering that question, and they have started to do that.
This past week, the District held two meetings to explain where they thought they could cut the budget and still retain core services. The number of suggestions that were proposed by citizens attending the two meetings were encouraging and I believe showed a willingness of the community to get involved in trying to solve the problems we face.
Personally, I was happy to hear all the suggestions from those attending the meetings, but I didn't hear many suggestions dealing with the top heavy administration in the District, which seems to be a sacred cow with the Board and Superintendent.
We have Thirty- three administrators in the District that make $70,000.00 to almost $132,000.00 a year. Several of those administrators make $80,000.00 to $94,000.00 a year and the Superintendent makes close to $132,000.00.
There are an additional sixteen administrators that make $60,000.00 to a little under $70,000.00 a year.
If those administrators making between $70,000.00 and 132,000.00 would take a voluntary pay cut of ten percent while the recession lasts, they would still be making a lot more a year than most in the community, but would save the District $971,000.00 a year. If the sixteen administrators making $60,000.00 to $70,000.00 would also take some kind of percentage pay cut the savings all together could be a million dollars a year or a little more.
I think an even better solution would be to consolidate the duties of all the administrators into fewer administrators, saving the entire salaries of the discontinued administrators and still having the remaining administrators take a percentage pay cut while the recession lasts.
The savings that would come from consolidation of administrative duties and voluntary percentage pay cuts would not solve all the District’s financial problems, but would be a very good start and would show their priorities are in line with the community in preserving the integrity of the core educational services and reducing expenses at the administrative level.
There are other areas where the District could cut expenses in non-essential programs and travel expenses. Many of these ideas have been written about in the many letters that have been sent to the letters to the editor section of the newspaper, including the four day school week, with Monday as the no school day. In addition, the suggestions the Board received at the two budget meetings this past week should give the board enough areas to consider.
I suggest we not even consider passing the levy scheduled for April or any other levy until we are satisfied the District has done everything possible to cut costs where possible and retain the core educational services.
