Cut administrator positions to spare classrooms – that was one request that parents, students, teachers and other employees made repeatedly at the Shoreline School Board Meeting Monday, May 15. About 80 people picketed outside the district offices before the meeting, some with signs that read “Layoffs start at the top” and “Support our kids, not administrators.”
Speakers at the meeting, and picketers, said that Shoreline School District officials have ignored comments that public input groups have made on how to balance the 2006-07 budget.
Picketing on the sidewalk outside the district offices Monday night, Veronica Cook, who teaches disabled students at Shorewood High School, said that many suggestions made at budget meetings have been ignored.
“Administrators make the decisions,” she said. “The big thing is that cuts should be made as far away from the classroom as possible. Why not (cut) those who make the most money? All the executive directors (the district has) — it doesn’t make sense.”
Officials have proposed cutting about $4.8 million for the 2006-07 school year to fill a roughly $3 million budget deficit. That includes cutting 45 teaching positions. The proposal is now in its third draft.
In the past two months, district officials have met with representatives from employee groups, PTAs and high schools in scheduled public meetings. They tallied comments from the meetings and made a list of priorities for what to save and what to cut based on those comments.
Teacher cuts
“The first thing on that list was to save the teachers,” said Wanda Boykin, a teacher’s assistant at Echo Lake Elementary.
In fact, saving teachers was identified as the top priority from the comments made at the March 21 and March 29 budget input meetings. It also ranked high at other public meetings.
When asked why teaching positions hadn’t been restored, acting superintendent Linda Johnson referred to data the district presented in March. When the district first proposed cutting the positions, it presented data that showed the district was overstaffed with teachers, compared to other districts.
“The data and personnel costs go back to the beginning,” Johnson said.
Enrollment has dropped but staffing levels haven’t, said Marjorie Ledell, executive director of Community Relations and District Services.
In addition, teacher cuts were decided before the budget process will finish this summer because the district had a deadline to notify teachers of their employment status, Johnson said.
“By May 15 we have to notify people whether they’re going to be part of the district or not,” she said. “So we have to make some of those statements (about cutting teaching positions) in advance.”
Administrative cuts
Suggestions to cut more administrative positions ranked high in comments at public input meetings. Despite that, district officials made only a minimal additional cut to administration in Draft 2.
At the May 8 Committee of the Whole meeting, the School Board asked staff to cut $300,000 to $400,000 from Shoreline Center and/or administration in Draft 3.
In response, district officials cut more administrative positions in that draft, which was presented to the board Monday night. (See information box, above.) After the presentation, Board member Dan Mann said the administration was now absorbing a significant portion of the cuts.
Others disagreed.
“How many extraneous administrative positions are there?” asked Chase Parker, a Shorewood High School student. “(We have) a Shoreline Center staff that could run Disneyland.”
He questioned the need for a district athletic director when high schools have their own athletic directors.
Laurie Rabinashad, president of the Shoreline chapter of SEIU Local 925, said the district is overstaffed with administrators according to the district’s own comparative data.
According to one district document, the district administration is overstaffed by 3.4 full-time equivalent employees.
The top six district administrators make from $103,00 a year on the low end to $152,00 a year, not including benefits, according to a salary schedule district officials released in April to Rabinashad.
District officials said there’s not much more to cut.
“It’s been looked at pretty hard,” Ledell said of potential administrative cuts. “Over the last five years, more administrators have left than been replaced.”
Community relations
Several speakers demanded cuts to the Community Relations department at the May 15 meeting.
“Cut the department of community relations to a realistic size in these troubled times,” Rabinashad said.
At the May 8 Committee of the Whole meeting, Board member Mann also suggested cutting from Community Relations. The department, he said, has nine full-time equivalent employees and a budget of $600,000-800,000 a year.
“Laurie (Rabinashad) and I both made public requests on how many people work in community relations,” said Chuck Leone, who’s worked in district transportation for 11 years. “I was told it would take a week, Laurie (was told) a month. Why can’t we have transparency?”
Ledell said that Community Relations has two full-time employees.
“Where they get (the number) nine, I’m not sure,” Ledell said.
The $600,000 to $800,000 a year number is not accurate, she said.
Four regular part-time employees share an office in the Community Relations department, but work for the Shoreline Conference Center, Ledell said. When people walk in, they might think they’re all in the same department, she said.
“For the last four years, I’ve been the administrator the Conference Center reports to, so people associate it with me. It is completely separate from Community Relations,” Ledell said. “My main role is Community Relations.”
Some participants at the May 3 budget input session also called for cuts to the Conference Center department, describing it as “bloated.”
Looking ahead
At the meeting’s end on May 15, some Board members assured the audience they were listening.
“Your comments are not falling on deaf ears,” said Board member Debi Ehrlichman. “The questions you’re asking, we’re asking.”
Board president Mike Jacobs read a statement from Johnson, who did not attend the meeting, that she would serve as acting superintendent through May 30.
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