New report recommends making cuts by fall 2007

The Columbus Dispatch

10/18/2005

By Bill Bush

The Columbus Dispatch

The Columbus Public Schools need to shed about 1,000 employees – about 10 percent of their full-time work force – by fall 2007, according to a report that is to be presented to the Board of Education today.

And more than half of those jobs should go before the start of next school year, according to the report.

“It goes without saying that it’s devastating to the entire school community,” said Mark Hatch, director of public affairs and policy for the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, which represents about 4,000 non-teaching employees in the district.

New Treasurer Michael Kinneer will present the revised five-year financial forecast, which predicts that by 2007-08 the district will lose another 5,000 students to charter schools and private schools eligible for new state vouchers.

That, coupled with a pledge to limit annual budget growth to 3 percent while footing the cost of pay increases, means the district should trim about $28.5 million from its payroll by next fiscal year, and another $21.6 million the next year, Kinneer said.

“That’s a large chunk of the budget,” he said yesterday.

Kinneer said he thinks his student-loss estimate is “reasonable,” but he cautioned that the actual number could be larger or smaller.

“It’s a working document,” he said.

It’s possible that the board could make other cuts – such as closing schools – to keep from losing staff members, “but when you think that 85 percent of the district budget is related to personnel, a lot of the reductions would have to come from that area,” Kinneer said.

The average employee’s salary and benefits cost the district about $50,000 a year, which is why Kinneer estimates that the district would need to cut 1,000 positions.

It’s so dramatic that board member Betty Drummond said she’s ready to discuss whether the district should drop its pledge to keep budget growth to 3 percent.

In asking voters to approve a 6.95-mill operating levy last November, district officials made that pledge, and also said they wouldn’t ask voters for more cash until 2008.

Even though the district is experiencing large losses of students to charter schools, the 3 percent growth guideline still is playing a role.

Though the district projects it could be losing $80 million to charters and vouchers in two more fiscal years, that loss is counted as an expense on the district’s books.

“The issues that relate to the budget have changed, and so dramatically that we may have to give it consideration,” Drummond, up for re-election in three weeks, said yesterday of the pledge.

“I’ve thought about this long and hard. None of us knew gasoline was jumping up. None of us knew all these kids would be leaving. Sometimes, you have to do it differently than you intended.”

The district could lose an additional $15 million in state aid next school year and $30 million the year after that to charter schools and vouchers, Kinneer projects.

Those figures are based on losing 5,000 students – almost 9 percent of the district’s 59,000-student enrollment – by the end of 2007-08.

Saying “a promise is a promise,” board Vice President Terry Boyd said the district should honor its 3 percent pledge.

“What we’re hoping is that we will experience some measure of savings through the right-sizing discussion,” Boyd said. “Obviously, there will be buildings that we won’t have to continue to oversee and staff.”

Reacting to a growing number of students leaving the district, a citizens task force is drafting the “right-sizing plan” to shutter an undetermined number of buildings by the end of this school year. The eight-member panel is expected to present a list of schools to be closed by mid-November.

Hatch said that a 1,000-person staff reduction over two years would be felt not only by students and parents but would have a “rippling effect” on the entire central Ohio economy.

“It’s very bad news,” he said. “The other shoe keeps dropping again and again and again, and it really creates devastating instability in the district.”

bbush@dispatch.com

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