Akron school board cuts 82 teaching positions
By Jeff Gorman
DOWNTOWN AKRON — The Akron Public Schools Board of Education cut another $7.3 million from the 2006-07 budget at a special meeting May 15.
The board eliminated all sports below the high school varsity level, along with 82 teaching positions. The cuts came in the wake of the May 2 defeat of Issue No. 1, an operating levy that would have generated $23 million per year. Along with the teaching jobs, another 34 positions were eliminated. This includes nine educational assistants, six secretaries, seven custodians, three specialists and nine other staff jobs.
Instrumental music programs at the elementary school level also were eliminated in this round of cuts, which balanced the budget for the 2006-07 school year. The board’s action also reduced the projected deficit for the 2007-08 school year to approximately $9 million. Earlier in the year, the school board had reduced the budget by $2.9 million and dropped 33 teaching positions. In the last four years, the district has cut $30 million from the budget, including 400 jobs.
The board has said they will put another levy on the ballot this November. The Summit County Board of Elections filing deadline for issues to be placed on the ballot is Aug. 24. “If the levy doesn’t pass this November, we will have to make further reductions,” said Treasurer Jack Pierson.
Pierson will include the latest cuts
to the budget that the school board is scheduled to approve
at its May 22 meeting. The board must submit the budget
to the state by May 31.
Of the teaching positions the
school board reduced, 16 of them are in elementary and
middle school foreign language; 13 are in elementary
instrumental music; and two are in the Visual and Performing
Arts program at Firestone High School. That program
has not been eliminated.
Superintendent Sylvester Small
said the fates of individual teachers would not be known
until the summer, when some teachers will retire.
“We tried to stay away
from reducing high school programs that students have
been involved in for years,”
said Board Vice President Linda Kersker. “I hope
we can look at restoring the middle school programs
if the levy passes. These cuts are not necessarily forever
if we can get the resources.”
The school board decided not to close
school buildings or drop Advanced Placement courses.
School board member Kirt Conrad
railed against the state’s method for funding
the schools.
“It’s unacceptable
that the state keeps putting us in a spot where we have
to keep going back to the taxpayers,” he said.
“It’s unacceptable
that these students will have less of an education than
I had.”
Administrative jobs were not reduced,
but board member Linda Omobien said the board did not
retain any more administrators than it needs.
“We have 166 workers in
central office and field administration,” she
said. “Some say we have more than that, but those
positions are instructional support positions. We are
at a skeletal level when it comes to administration.”
After the meeting, board member
James Hardy talked about the difficulty of deciding
what to cut and what to
save.
“It comes down to a value judgment,
and it’s whether to cut something good or something
else good,” he said. “I hope we sent the message
to voters that we are in a serious, dire situation.”
One of the most far-reaching
areas of the cuts was in athletics, where everything
but high school varsity sports was dropped.
Among the high school positions
that were eliminated are seven assistant marching band
directors; two assistant varsity tennis coaches; three
assistant varsity swimming coaches; seven assistant
high school athletic directors; eight middle school
drama coaches; 30 middle school music directors and
40 elementary school music directors.
Small said the list of eliminations
stayed true to the list of items that the school board
warned could be cut if the levy was defeated.
“We can revisit everything
if a levy is passed,” said Walker. “We want
to offer the students everything we can.”
Kersker said help is not going
to be coming from the state anytime soon.
“I talked to the trustees
of the Ohio School Boards
Association,” she said, “and they are working
on a constitutional amendment that would change the
funding system. Even if they could get it passed in
the fall of 2007, it would take three more years for
the new system to take effect.”
A small group of parents and teachers
attended the meeting, but the school board decided to
discuss the cuts in executive (closed) session to avoid
talking about individual people’s jobs in public.
“I care about what is going
to be cut and why,” said Anne Biermann, who has
two children attending Firestone High School. “I
care about the whys. I know we have to make cuts someplace,
but I would rather see some schools close so the others
can maintain their quality.”
The next meeting of the Akron
school board is scheduled for May 22 at 5:30 p.m. at
the Administration Building, 70 N. Broadway.
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