Miami-Dade

Salaries Stuck

School Board wants to postpone teacher raises

By Jordan Melnick     

The Miami-Dade County School Board met with the district Monday to discuss how to cope with a $284.3 million projected budget shortfall for next fiscal year. Among the district’s many suggestions: layoffs, closing schools and postponing teacher raises.

“We’re going to lay off 1,500 people as a result of this meeting by my calculations,” board member Evelyn Greer said. The layoffs, she said, “are going to come from all over.”

Board chair Agustin Barrera estimated that every 200 layoffs bring the district $10 million closer to balancing the budget.

Superintendent Rudy Crew calculated the shortfall based on a projected $75 million reduction in state funding, coupled with more than $200 million in increased costs. It was his aim Monday, he said, to provide the board with a “financial snapshot” and have its members voice their opinions about the district’s proposals.

The plan that sparked the most heated debate proposed postponing teacher raises to save $48.2 million, the largest sum for any one item.

“You pay for what you can afford,” Barrera said, “and we can’t afford this right now.”

The proposal comes less than two weeks after the board decided to continue offering full-coverage health care to teachers at a cost of $36 million.

“When we decided to pay for health insurance ... we made it clear that we weren’t going to pay for raises,” Greer said. “[The teachers] said they’d rather have their health insurance.”

Board member Marta Pérez did not see it that way. “This would be a terrible thing,” she said. “We always say, ‘In the future, you’re going to get more raises.’ Now, here’s the future and they’re not getting them. I can’t support this.”

Over Pérez’s objection, however, a majority of the board voted to consider the proposal.      

The board also accepted the following district proposals: to close 11 schools, saving $11 million; to reduce the number of zone schools — those specifically targeted because of low performance — from 39 to as few as 10, saving $9 million; to cut 261 positions from the district’s central administration, saving $20.1 million; to not rehire retired teachers, saving $12.5 million; to eliminate non-mandatory summer school, saving $9.9 million; to eliminate transportation for magnet and vocational students, which would save $11.3 million, but cost 158 bus drivers their jobs; to lower the number of in-school psychologist workdays from 260 to 212, saving $2.2 million; and to increase field trip costs, saving $1.1 million.

In fact, the board acquiesced to almost all of the district’s proposals, seemingly resigned to the financial crisis at hand. Perhaps its one notable rejection was an item proposing to reduce allocation funds for school equipment and supplies by $7 million.

“We said we were not going to touch the schools,” said board member Ana Rivas Logan. “And we’re not going to touch schools.”

But if the board chose not to “touch the schools” directly, the district’s many proposals will no doubt affect schools indirectly.

“We’re dealing with $200 million in cuts coming from a variety of places,” district spokesman John Schuster said. “This is going to be a pretty tough year.”

The votes cast by board members at the workshop only gave the district guidance and did not set anything in stone. A second workshop is scheduled for May 13.