5/10/2012 - West Side Leader
     

Approximately 200 positions eliminated

DOWNTOWN AKRON — The Akron Public Schools (APS) Board of Education unanimously approved $18.1 million in budget cuts proposed by Superintendent David James in an effort to close an expected $22 million to $24 million budget gap.

Treasurer Jack Pierson and staff projected the deficit in the district’s five-year financial forecast this past October. The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) requires school districts to balance their budgets by the end of each fiscal year, June 30.

The budget reductions, proposed and approved at the board’s May 7 meeting, include 202 staff positions: 139 teachers, 15 administrators, 23 secretaries/clerical workers, 21 maintenance/transportation workers and four instructional support staff.

Preliminary numbers of layoffs include 51 elementary, 45 middle school and 16 high school teachers, James said. Although the final number of teacher retirements this year is not yet known, attrition will reduce those numbers somewhat. Art, music and physical education will lose six-and-a-half positions and fifth-grade band/strings eight-and-a-half positions, he said.

The administrative cuts include seven school principals and assistant principals. The personnel cuts will save approximately $13.6 million, said James.

Middle school sports also will be eliminated, at a savings of $200,000. The district currently pays METRO for its buses to stop at schools; eliminating this service — with students walking a block or so from the regular bus stop — will save $350,000, according to James.

The district also will shift some of its APS security duties to the Akron Police Department to save $245,000, he said.

Supplies and textbook expenditures will be reduced by $750,000 each. Nonpersonnel reductions will total around $4.6 million, he said.

All of these cuts will still leave the APS $3.7 million in the red, James said. The district also faces the potential loss of an additional $2 million in commercial/industrial tax revenue beyond its earlier projections, Pierson announced at the board’s previous meeting.

Even though the officials have tried to keep the reductions away from the students, James said, “As large as the deficit is, it’s impossible not to affect the classroom.

“The money just is not there,” he added. “We have to make adjustments. Many of our families are doing that, and we have to, too.”

School board members acknowledged how painful such cuts are.

“This goes far beyond cuts — this feels like an amputation, with the loss of good programs and people — but it’s to save the body,” said board member Lisa Mansfield. “The situation is not of our making, and we have to make tough decisions.”

And this is not the end of the cuts: The proposals still come $3.7 million short of making up the minimum $22 million deficit. More reductions will have to be made this summer, James said, “and further cuts will be more difficult.”

“If we can’t get these deficits under control and cut our costs, we risk going into fiscal emergency,” when the state would take control of the district, said James.

The district must now revise its five-year forecast to reflect the newest cuts and submit it to the ODE by the end of May, James said. The data will help officials decide how large the millage will have to be for the school levy planned for the November ballot.

If the levy does not pass in November, the cuts will still need to be made and another $24 million will need to be cut next fiscal year, he said.

Board member Tim Miller said the large cuts are “not scare tactics to pass a levy. These are real and don’t even get us where we need to be by July.”

The board’s next regular meeting is set for May 21 at 5:30 p.m. at the Sylvester Small Administration Building, 70 N. Broadway in Downtown Akron.

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