a message from Superintendent Dr. Curtis Jones
Four million dollars is the budget deficit that we are projecting for next year.
The cuts to our state revenue are being continued from FY10 to FY11. FY10 cuts included a calculation equal to 6 days of teacher pay. (We used 3 furlough days to help meet that cut in the current school year.)
The FY11 cuts will be deeper because there will be fewer stimulus dollars to help fill the funding gaps.
Our board of education began working on solving this problem Friday, April 9, when we conducted our spring retreat in the board meeting room at Central Office.
Our Assistant Superintendent for Administrative Services and Chief Financial Officer Jim Smith presented how $4,000,000 was calculated. He also shared cost-saving ideas generated over the past year - many from you.
Our plan
We're going to form two cost containment committees. These committees will consider your cost saving ideas. They will also have the option to put more ideas on the table. We will ask them to recommend how we can best absorb this $4 million dollar reduction.
Who will serve on the committees?
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Administrators
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Teachers
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Classified staff
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Parents
Our intent is to let solutions come from all perspectives.
Once these two cost containment committees have independently reached their recommended way of reducing our budget deficit, a subgroup from each committee will come together to combine ideas into one prioritized list.
The joint recommendation will be explained to our district leadership team of school principals and some central office individuals. This leadership team will review the recommendation, make final recommendations to me, and I'll in turn make my recommendation to the board of education.
This will be a quick turn around. A lot of work has already been done in developing these ideas. When some of you are asked to serve on the cost containment committees, I hope you'll be willing to do so.
What we're doing right now
It's important to know that we are continuing to implement some cost-saving measures that we've already talked about.
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We're still continuing to save on utilities. Each one of us can try to save energy.
A few weeks ago a bus driver told me, "Col. Jones, every time I go by your office I look inside the window and I can see a lamp that's on. You tell us to turn those lamps off." My lamp is now turned off.
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The school system will use a four-day work week this summer consisting of four ten-hour days.
This will probably cover a period of five weeks. We anticipate for each Friday that all of our buildings are closed, we'll save between $8,000 and $10,000 in utility costs. While $50,000 of potential savings may not sound like much, it is equal to the salaries of 4 or 5 paraprofessionals or classified staff. We're taking this measure very seriously.
As always, if you have ideas of what we can do to save,
please share them with me or with your supervisor. Hopefully you'll know somebody on one of these two cost containment committees, and you can share information with them as well.
We will be getting back to you soon so we can continue to finalize our plans for moving toward next school year.
This will be my last COMMUNICATOR before we go on spring break. Thank you for a job well done. Enjoy your spring break, and please come back to us refreshed and ready to finish out our school year.
H
ave a good spring break. I dare you to do it.
Thank you!
