School Board OKs Staff Cuts

The Hernando school district will soon be leaner.

A split school board on Monday night voted 3-2 to approve a staffing reduction plan that cuts 201 instructional and support positions, among other measures, to trim next year's budget by about $11.6 million.

Of those, 129 teaching positions will be eliminated, increasing the teacher to student ratios across all grade levels.

The other 70 or so positions would be cut by halving the number of assessment teachers, reducing reading and math coaches. There also will be fewer media specialists and driver education teachers. The district's six magnet schools will lose their additional funding, to the tune of more than $799,000.

Officials are still clinging to hope that the staff reductions will be through attrition and that layoffs can be avoided.

"We're going to do everything we can to keep their jobs," board member Pat Fagan said.

Board members John Sweeney and James Yant dissented in the vote. But even the board members who voted for the staffing plan said they did so grudgingly.

Board Chairwoman Dianne Bonfield noted personnel costs consume as much as 85 percent of the district's operating budget.

"So when a school system is asked to find ways to cut, it is very difficult not to cut into employees," Bonfield said.

Yant said he wasn't ready to commit to the reductions. Saving jobs would not only help the classroom, but also would help the economy, Yant said.

"I think it's important to consider every option, and the last option should be jobs," he said. "We are in an economic spiral, and it keeps getting worse and worse and worse."

Sweeney said he would be willing to consider cutting back on bus service before eliminating teacher positions, an idea Superintendent Wayne Alexander has proposed but that has found little support among board members.

A decision on staffing needed to be made Tuesday to avoid sending teachers home for the summer thinking they have jobs, and then notifying them before fall their positions have been eliminated because the fiscal picture is more dismal than expected, Heather Martin, executive director of business services, told the board.

Board members said they are hopeful federal stimulus money will help the state Legislature hold education harmless.

"If there's a miracle and we have extra money, the board can always ... add items back in (to the budget)," Martin said.

Judy Holmes, a teacher at Challenger K-8, pleaded before the vote for the board to find other ways to save money.

"If we are going to hold our classroom sacred, the last thing we want to do is take the teacher out of them," Holmes said.

Holmes said she suspects she's one of the magnet positions that will be eliminated with hopes for reassignment to another post. But such reassignments may backfire, Holmes said.

"It's not fair to the kids to just give us a job," Holmes said. "It's important for us to be where we can best serve them. If we put (teachers) in a position where they're not happy, they may go for another career choice. We have some really good teachers on the line here."

Joe Vitalo, president of the Hernando Classroom Teachers Association, defended the board, saying the district has no choice but to take extreme measures because of lawmakers' failed promises to protect education funding.

"We are now reacting to the ineptness of Tallahassee," Vitalo said.

Board members made a plea to the public to lobby lawmakers to go easy on education. Sweeney came out in support of a penny sales tax increase for education and urged constituents to make calls and send letters to their elected officials.

"It's time to apply the pressure and let them know we don't have all this waste. We really have been cut to the bone over the years, and we can't cut any further," he said.