Classroom Cutbacks

School board to trim another $38.8 million from budget

By Jordan Melnick    

In an effort to slash more than $38 million from next year’s budget, the Miami-Dade County School Board approved measures this week that would increase the size of certain classes, shorten the work year for school police officers and scale back the magnet program. These cuts, together with a much larger budget reduction approved by the board in April, come as the result of a $284.3 million projected budget shortfall in 2008-2009.

The board and the school district met at a budget workshop Tuesday — the latest in a series dating back to December — to discuss how to cope with the financial crisis. The district proposed 10 budget cuts amounting to the $38.8 million and the board accepted them all.

The bulk of the district’s recommendations tinkered with class size. For example, it suggested increasing the ratio of physical education teachers to students from 1-to-21 to 1-to-30, for a savings of $6.8 million; enlarging the average size of gifted classes from 15 students to 18, saving $7.3 million; and increasing the size of alternative education classes, such as drop-out prevention, from 12 to 15, saving $5 million.

The district also suggested reconfiguring the Magnet Program to save $9 million, the largest sum for any one item. The board approved this suggestion, even though members Martin Karp and Marta Pérez both wanted a better understanding of what the “reconfiguration” would entail. There was talk about higher field-trip fees and, perhaps, a reduction in teachers, but nothing specific.

“We are not going to eliminate these programs,” Superintendent Rudy Crew said. “We are going to take them back to their originally conceived level of funding. What is really being cut in this case are the additions.” Still, Crew conceded that scaling the programs back is “going to be a shock to schools.”

The board also approved recommendations to eliminate all general fund support for WLRN, its licensed TV and radio station, saving $3.1 million; to downsize the Exceptional Student Education program by $3 million; and to reduce the work year for school police officers from 12 to 10 months, saving $2.1 million, but making Miami-Dade County one of only three districts in the state without a year-round police force.

Tuesday’s meeting followed up on an April 28 workshop, where the board approved $256.5 million in cuts, leaving $27.8 million to be trimmed from next year’s budget. The district exceeded that and cut $38.8 million to put the difference — $11 million — in its contingency reserve for use in an emergency.

“If we have a hurricane, we are going to be in serious trouble,” board member Evelyn Greer said. “We need to keep as much money in the contingency reserve as possible.”

The allusion to a hurricane seems ironic as the district attempts to weather a financial storm brought about by a statewide recession and ever-increasing budget cuts filtering down from Tallahassee. Usually understated, Superintendent Crew offered a dark forecast Tuesday. 

“These are tough times, people,” he said. “These are tough, tough times. Nobody on this board wants to see a reduction in force, to see people out on the streets. But the equation we are in with Tallahassee is a death-walk equation. The fact of the matter is that a part of this family is going to have to be severed.... It’s simply a matter of time.”

Crew added that he intends to propose a reduction in force at next Wednesday’s school board meeting. This will also be an opportunity for the board to officially vote on the district’s recommendations and set them in stone. Greer made the case that the board should vote on measures that will result in layoffs as soon as possible.

“It would be manifestly unfair to lay off 1,000 employees in late June,” she said. “We need to give them sufficient notice.”

In other news, the district told the board in an earlier Tuesday meeting that it would postpone plans to “repurpose” 11 schools until the 2009-10 school year. The district did, however, outline its criteria for determining candidates for repurposing, saying it would take into account enrollment patterns, academic performance, facility condition and community engagement. A low rating in these four categories might result in a school being utilized as something other than a school — an administrative office, for example — provided there is another school nearby that could absorb its student body.

According to the district, repurposing 11 schools would save $11 million. Though the district said it had a list of 31 candidates, it did not list any school by name. 

“Hopefully by December we will have info compiled,” district lawyer Freddie Woodson said. “We can then go about notifying communities, tell people what is happening, that their child might be moving to a different school.”

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