Wichita School Board Restores Sports, 44 Jobs (KS)
June 21, 2011
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Wichita high school C-team and
sophomore sports survived the school district chopping block Monday, but the
elementary orchestra program and high school librarians did not.
The school board also voted to
restore 28 teaching positions, including half the middle school band and
orchestra positions originally slated for elimination, and decided not to ask
employees to take a furlough day.
Superintendent John Allison’s final
budget proposal includes $27.7 million in cuts for the 2011-12 school year. On
Monday, he presented “add-backs” worth about $2.6 million, which
officials said would come from higher-than-expected reimbursements for Medicaid
and special-education services.
The school board voted 6-1 to
approve Allison’s recommendations. Board members will see a complete proposed
budget July 18 and are expected to approve the budget Aug. 8.
Barb Fuller voted against Allison’s
revised plan, saying she was “disappointed” that athletics programs
were restored but not librarians.
“So athletics has not been
hurt, with our current changes, in our whole district budget?” Fuller
asked.
Allison said the proposed
elimination of C-team sports — estimated to save $172,000 — made up “a
large chunk of what was a fairly limited budget.”
He added that board members could
face the same cuts or worse in coming years.
“I would love to be able to say
we won’t be back,” Allison said. “I don’t see next year being better,
and potentially the year after.”
Allison’s plan would restore 44
full-time positions to the budget, includ ing four learning coaches and four
custodians, who would be “returned to schools with the greatest
square-footage needs.”
Walt Chappell, a member of the State
Board of Education, urged board members during the public comment portion of
Monday’s meeting to restore all the proposed cuts and instead transfer money
from the district’s cash reserves to its general fund.
“That money is sitting there,
and they could use it to educate students,” Chappell said.
Board member Lynn Rogers said
reserve funds “cannot be used unless we take them away from somewhere
else,” and that many are targeted to specific areas, such as special
education and food services.
“These are not solutions.
They’ve not been solutions for . . . the 10 or 20 times I’ve explained them to
various groups that try to continue to mislead the public,” he said.
Several board members voiced
frustration over various parts of Allison’s revised plan, but said they
supported the compromises he proposed. For example, he proposed restoring 4.5
string-instrument teaching positions to middle schools to support beginning
strings students.
Lanora Nolan said she threw a
“hissy fit” when she first saw the plan because she wanted to find a
way to keep the fifth-grade orchestra program.
“To watch (the district) be
dismantled one brick at a time . . . It is really the most helpless
feeling,” she said.
“If we strip all of our fine
arts out of the buildings because it’s not a core curriculum, then I have to
stop and ask: What are our kids going to read and write about, if they aren’t
having enriched life experiences?”
Nolan voted for Allison’s plan,
however, because she said it amounted to a reasonable compromise.
“I know we want to go through
this with a laser and not a hatchet, and I appreciate the effort it took,”
she said. “Those weren’t easy conversations.”
Fuller said replacing certified high
school librarians with library clerks “will certainly affect
students” as well as teachers.
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Allison said library clerks would
not be allowed to supervise students, meaning classroom teachers would have to
stay with their students during library time.
“It’s going to be
different,” he said. But Allison said he asked high school principals to
“look at where their priorities fell . . . and librarians weren’t in that
top tier.”
Rogers said the $2.6 million in
unexpected funding “helps us alleviate the pain a little bit, but the pain
is still there.
“We’ve amputated a leg, and
this basically lets us buy a crutch,” he said. “None of us wants to
vote for this . . . I know folks are going to be unhappy with us.”