Teachers React to Budget Cut Possibilities

For three weeks this past month, the district conducted a 21-question online survey that asked district employees, students and patrons their opinions on a number of budget cut possibilities. Among the options were cutting teachers, special education and custodial staff, supplies budgets, coaches, librarians and music programs. At last Monday’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Gene Johnson presented the results of that survey to the board and public.

Over 3,500 comments were written by the 8,564 individuals that took the survey, all of which have been published on the district’s website, www.smsd.org. Parents made up the largest percentage of participants, 42 percent, while students were the smallest demographic at 11 percent.

The survey, named “The Budget Reduction Survey,” said the district needed to make $10-10.5 million in cuts to balance its budget for next year. Final budget reduction proposals will be presented by Dr. Johnson to the board at the April 11 Board of Education meeting with the board taking action on the proposals on August 8. When asked, Spanish teacher and East Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) representative Linda Sieck characterized the district’s finances as “bleak” and was concerned about coming years when the district might not have reserve funds to fall back on.

“It’s especially scary because we don’t know what the Legislature is going to do,” Sieck said, “if their action is going to keep things at the status quo or even make them worse, and so, right now, everyone is in a ‘prepare for the worst’ mode.”

One of the most drastic moves has already happened––nine East teachers, about eight percent of the faculty, have been put on excess, meaning they aren’t guaranteed a job with the district next year. Sieck believes the classroom will be affected by those cuts, and that teachers will be required to teach larger classes and more of them.

“Teachers will do the best job possible, but there are only so many hours in the day, only so much you can do even if you are a true professional and you are dedicated, you do need to sleep and eat and have fun every once in a while,” Sieck said.

Junior Kellyn Harrison said she took the survey because her music teachers at East asked her to. While Harrison is currently enrolled in Symphonic Band, Choraliers and Chambers singers, it was potential custodial cuts that she found “really interesting.” The survey suggested a cut that would eliminate 21.25 custodial positions district-wide. According to the survey, the plan would be to have teams of three custodians circulate the district to provide “deep cleaning“ at buildings every three days.

“I can’t even imagine our school building being cleaned every three days when it’s being cleaned every day now,” Harrison said.

The survey also asked participants how they felt about a freeze on the purchase of new books and the elimination of secondary librarians. A library aide, according to the survey, would replace librarians at district middle schools and high schools. About 38 percent agreed with cutting librarians, and just below 43 percent agreed with freezing book purchases. According to East librarian Chris Larson, librarians are required to have a masters in either Educational Technology or Library Sciences. Larson wasn’t sure if aides would be qualified to do more than tasks such as checking out library books. She said she kept the statement “I know we need to cut to the bone, but not to the heart” in mind as she filled out the survey herself. Last year, one librarian was cut from each high school, leaving Larson as East’s only librarian.

Junior Spencer Davis believes cutting the supplies budget is the district’s best option. Davis has talked about supplies cuts with IB history teacher John Nickels, and thinks that more handouts could be put on a teacher’s Web Back Pack leaving the burden of printing the handout to the student.

While Davis is supportive of cutting supplies budgets, he opposes the district’s effort to eliminate three supplemental pay positions for co-curricular and extra-curricular programs at each of the five high schools. Davis feels that could put activities such as drama at their breaking point.

“Cutting the extra coaches and extra drama teachers and music teachers would kind of almost end those programs in that sense, and I thought it [would be] an unacceptable cut to make,” Davis said.

Dr. Johnson identified several suggestions that he said recurred frequently in the comments section of the survey. Reducing employee pay, namely a reduction in administrative pay and benefits, increasing certain fees, closing a high school, consolidating district offices and pursuing district fundraisers and corporate sponsorships were some of the suggestions Dr. Johnson listed. Dr. Johnson also said participants had a concern for the arts and higher class sizes. He said implementing energy saving methods and looking into reducing program budgets rather than eliminating them also frequently came up in comments.

In the public forum portion of last Monday’s board meeting six parents spoke out against cutting Parents as Teachers, a program that works with parents during the early years of their children’s lives, from conception to kindergarten. Sieck believes the Shawnee Mission community isn’t willing to let programs get cut and class sizes to become larger. She feels that state legislators think schools can get by with bare-bone budgets and not have it affect the quality of education being provided. That just isn’t the case, she said.

“I think that message needs to get to legislators,” Sieck said. “They need to hear it from the general public that ‘You know what? This is Kansas. One of the things we’re most proud of about Kansas is we have some of the best schools in the country and we want [our legislators] to maintain them. We’re not willing to sacrifice our schools for the sake of tax cuts.’”

As district administrators work on their final budget cut proposals, which will be announced at the April 11 Board of Education meeting, Sieck wants them to take teacher and administrator cuts hand-in-hand.

“I think if you are looking at cutting teaching staff, you need to look at cutting administrative staff,” Sieck said. “If you’re talking about freezing teachers’ salaries, then you need to freeze administrators’ salaries. That didn’t happen last year––not in all cases.”

But, in the end, Sieck wants all district budget reduction options on the table.

“Everything needs to be out there,” Sieck said. “There can’t be any sacred cows when you have this kind of pressure.”