Posted
on
Thursday, March 04, 2010 (CST)
By Rachel Whitten
March 4, 2010
(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. – Kansas school districts may cut more than 5,000 jobs across the state next year because of funding cuts, according to a new survey by the Kansas State Board of Education.
The survey, released earlier this week, details the cuts school districts say they will have to make if school funding falls to the low end of ranges now being considered in the Kansas Legislature.
The survey of all 292 Kansas school districts lists the number of jobs each district plans to cut and other specific areas they plan to tighten up if lawmakers pass a state budget near the lower of two that Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson outlined in his State of the State message in January. The higher of the two school funding proposals outlined then included proposed increases in sales and tobacco taxes that legislators have either rejected or not yet approved. The lower one presumes no such additional tax revenue will be available.
If state revenue does not increase, Kansas school administrators told the Board survey that 5,097 jobs will be eliminated statewide. The districts also listed a variety of other cuts they would make, ranging from after school programs to counseling and school maintenance.
The potential job cuts may be overstated, however.
KansasWatchdog, an online investigative news service that like KansasReporter is affiliated with the Kansas Policy Institute, reported that a similar Board of Education survey last year vastly overstated the number of jobs lost to similar cuts a year ago.
That Board survey calculated that schools across the state cut more than 3,700 jobs in 2009-2010. But an indepedent count by the Kansas Legislative Research Department reported in January that the actual count was only 875. And separate calculations by the Policy Institute, based on Legislative Research and Board of Education reports, found that total employment in schools system since 2004 has grown 8.5 percent, or about three times faster than enrollments, which are up 2.8 percent.
With $250 million already cut from budgets begun before the severity of Kansas funding problems became evident, many school districts now find that eliminating positions altogether is easier than asking teachers to take a pay cut, the latest Board survey showed. While pay cuts have to have the approval of teacher unions, the unions themselves do not have a say in position elimination.
Besides eliminating positions, some smaller school districts said in the survey they are considering switching to a four day school week, which would help cut costs for things such as n utilities, bus transportation and custodial work. About 12 districts in Kansas have already implemented the four day week as a cost saving measure, the survey found.
Of the 292 districts in Kansas, only eight are not making positions cuts at all, choosing to save money in areas such as textbooks and technology.
“Districts have already cut to the bone,” said Board of Education Chair Janet Waugh, of Kansas City.
“The muscles are gone. They’re cutting the bone,” Waugh said. “I think anymore cuts will have a serious impact on the education of our state, because now were cutting programs. I think this will do nothing but have a negative effect.”
The districts surveyed based their estimated cuts on what at the time was estimated to be an approximately $400 million shortfall in the state budget. Revenue collections since then have continued to trail the projections on which that estimate is based and Gov. Parkinson has scheduled a news conference Friday at which he is expected to talk of potential further budget changes.
School districts “are already having to lay off people now, with what they’ve already been cut,” said Brad Neuenswanger, the Kansas State Department of Education’s director for school finance. “If there was something other than staff, they’d have already cut it by now.”
But state school board member Walt Chappell of Wichita said it’s much too early to panic.
“There’s no reason to get people excited about losing jobs, there’s so many ways for districts to save the money they already have without losing jobs or cutting programs,” Chappell said.
One of Chappell’s recommendations for cutting costs was to eliminate teacher plan periods.
“If the teachers had to teach kids instead of plan you would have increased productivity, smaller classes and you keep the costs down because you haven’t hired extra teachers to teach the kids while those other classrooms are sitting empty,” Chappell said.