Dark Clouds For Bright Beginnings; CMS Budget Cuts $100 Million
The recommended change to the district’s weighted student staffing formula, which funnels additional resources to high-poverty, low-performing schools, would cut 134 of the 800 teaching positions currently assigned to those schools, saving nearly $8 million.
Gorman, who called weighted student staffing “the most important program, after teacher effectiveness, that we have in place at CMS,” said that under the revamped formula the district would still be allocating more than 670 teaching positions and $40 million over normal levels to targeted schools.
While recommending a shift in bell schedules that would lengthen the day for some schools and impact upwards of 80,000 students, Gorman sidestepped a proposal to eliminate busing for all magnet students, at least for now. The decision, he said, like all the recommendations he made, represented the “best thinking at this time,” and was subject to change based on shifting economic realities and feedback from the community and school board.
Under the proposal, elementary school days would be lengthened 45 minutes, to seven hours, bringing them closer in line with middle and high schools, allowing more compact scheduling of bus routes. The change would yield about $4 million in transportation savings.
“We think it’s a benefit to our kids to be in contact with a high-quality teacher longer in the day,” Gorman said.
Most of the impacted schools would see only marginal changes – an additional 15 minutes or so for starting and ending bell times – but a handful would see their schedules change by 45 to 90 minutes. A complete list of proposed time changes is available here.
The revised bell schedules drew largely positive feedback from school board members.
“This is actually the one good thing out of this whole day,” said Rhonda Lennon, “that we’re going to keep elementary school kids a little bit longer and give them more academic opportunities.”
Lennon, however, said she was disappointed that additional cuts to transportation for magnet schools weren’t included in Gorman’s preliminary recommendations. She wants to continue to explore expanding shuttle stops for magnet schools, building upon the ones that were created this year.
“I’m not really cool with it,” Lennon said of the decision not to pursue more magnet busing cuts. “I’m not done with that one yet.”
Gorman said that creating additional shuttle stops would be problematic, because the existing ones had already stretched staff thin. Gorman similarly sidestepped a question from board member Tim Morgan, about whether additional cuts could be made at the district’s learning community administrative outposts. Staffing levels, Gorman said, have already been cut there to the point where additional ones would prove detrimental.
“Some say we have a funding problem, excuse me, some say we have a spending problem,” Board of Education Chairman Eric Davis said Tuesday night. “We don’t have a spending problem; we have a funding problem in public education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. That’s our problem. We don’t have the funds that it’s clear our citizens needs.”
The full presentation for recommended cuts that Gorman delivered Tuesday night is available here. Other major cuts pitched by Gorman, which likely won’t receive a vote from the board until later in the year, include:
~ $15 million: Increasing class size by an average of two students in grades 4-12; would eliminate about 255 positions.
~ $9.3 million: Eliminating teacher assistants from first and second grades; 328 positions.
~ $11.2 million: Cutting one instructional support staff (such as literary facilitators, counselors, media specialists) from each school; 164 positions.
~ $8.1 million: Reducing school maintenance; eliminate more than 50 custodian jobs.
~ $4.3 million: Cutting incentive, signing and critical-needs teacher bonuses.
~ $3.2 million: Eliminating unfilled career-technical teaching positions.
~ $1.2 million: Cutting more than 20 campus security staff and other cuts to school law enforcement.
~ $1.1 million: Cutting funds for after-school and weekend programming.
~ $400,000: Eliminating middle-school sports; shifting revenue raised from charging kids to participate in high school sports, along with $1 surcharge on tickets for high school athletic events, which currently helps fund middle school sports, and using it to instead fund high school sports.
“We’re to the point that we’re through scraping on the skin,” White said of the recommended budget cuts. “We’ve reached the bone; anything we do hurts at this point.”
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