The North Little Rock School Board on Tuesday approved a three-year plan for saving $13.5 million in operating expenses to offset construction costs and to prepare for the eventual annual loss of $7.6 million in state desegregation aid.
The bulk of the cuts -- which include eliminating dozens of licensed and support staff positions as well as voluntary reductions in days worked per year -- will occur in the coming 2015-16 school year.
Other measures include a 30 percent cut to department budgets, eliminating most lunch and before-school supervisory aides, cutting 16 custodians and five bus drivers, reorganizing the maintenance department and discontinuing Mandarin Chinese lessons at the secondary level.
About 30 certified employees are being notified this week that their jobs are being eliminated for the coming school year, and 22 others are being told that their pay will be cut -- primarily by stopping their stipends for extra duty -- Superintendent Kelly Rodgers said. That will produce a savings of $1.6 million.
Many of the stipend and licensed-position cuts are the result of consolidating school campuses, such as combining the district's two middle schools into one for the coming year, and no longer needing two educators in a job that can be done by one.
While certified staff members are being told of job cuts before the May 1 deadline set in law, notice to the support staff employees of job cuts in their ranks will be done later in May, Rodgers said. Some of those job cuts are the result of closing some schools and opening fewer but larger new schools.
In all, the district is seeking to save $8.05 million in 2015-16, $1.26 million in 2016-17 and nearly $4.2 million in 2017-18.
School Board President Scott Miller said the budget-cut plan is the result of a lot of work by the district staff and the School Board that has had three previous workshops on the issue.
"This is a tough issue. Let me compliment this board and this community because as we sit here, I believe we are the first school district in Pulaski County to actually address all the cutbacks that need to be made because of the loss of desegregation money and to pay for the capital improvement plan.
"We have now established a plan. We have established a degree of certainty here that provides some assurance of where we are and where we are going," Miller said.
He said the district is set up to succeed in terms of student population, programs, facilities and resources.
"We are far better off than any other school district in this county to succeed and grow than what we were three years ago before we started this process," he said.
Rodgers and Denise Drennan, the district's chief financial officer, answered questions from the board about the specific measures on the list of more than 40 areas for budget cuts over the three years.
"This is a living, breathing plan," Drennan told the board. "Every year we'll have to re-evaluate it."
Starting this coming school year, employees who work more than 192 days a year will have the opportunity to voluntarily shorten the number of days they work in a year, allowing some who are contracted to work during the Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks to take days off without pay. That is projected to save about $56,000.
For the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school year, the plan calls for forgoing the annual step increases typically paid to eligible employees for their additional year of work experience. For teachers, that step is $1,025. Termed a "partial non-renewal of step increases," the measure would save the district $1.8 million over two years. The measure will be presented to the district's Personnel Policies Committee for review and an employee vote.
At the request of board member Darrell Montgomery, the full board voted to retain the three human-services workers who were on the list to be cut to save $127,765. The employees at Boone Park, Glenview, North Heights and Seventh Street elementary schools serve as liaisons between the schools and the parents of pupils. Their job is to make the parents aware of available resources for their children and, otherwise, promote student success.
"I thought that was our purpose," Montgomery said, adding that the need for the employees was greatest at schools with high percentages of children from low-income families.
Montgomery also urged the district administration to be fair in making the cuts and to do all they can to communicate and explain the plans to the district's employees.
One of the budget-cut measures for the coming year is to use special state aid that is calculated based on the percentage of low-income students in a district to partially pay salaries of assistant principals. That would be done instead of using district operating funds for the expenses.
Initially, district leaders had also planned to reduce costs for assistant principals by reducing their work year to 207 days.
Board member Dorothy Williams urged that assistant-principal workdays not be cut because that would hurt students and the schools. Drennan assured Williams that the reduction in days for the assistant principals had been removed from the savings list and that the district would find another way to recoup the $102,237 initially tied to the administrative jobs.
The budget-savings plan for the coming school year includes nearly $4.7 million in cuts, including the personnel reductions, no payment of any bonuses or raises at a savings of $1.4 million, $1.6 million that won't be spent from the state's $7.6 million desegregation aid payment to the district and $360,000 in utility savings.
Some of the budget plans for future years call for increasing student enrollment by 100 or more students per year, which will generate state aid to the district. Also in the years beyond 2016-17, the district will realize the savings from an employee early-retirement program that started this year.
A sample of the planned cuts the coming school year not previously listed include:
• 82 early-morning supervision aides at a savings of $89,352.
• 74 school lunch aides at a savings of $361,784.
• Elementary Spanish instruction program at a savings of $176,435.
• Two maintenance warehouse positions.
• Six school bus aides at a savings of $63,986.
• Five bus drivers at a savings of $144,926.
• Stricter management of the Family Medical Leave Act benefit to employees at a savings of $220,000.
• Eliminating duplication among secondary school clerks, secretaries at consolidated campuses for a saving of $288,000.
• Eliminating duplication among elementary clerks, secretaries, lab manager at consolidated campuses for a savings of $192,000.
Metro on 04/29/2015