Transcript of Media Briefing Regarding 2009-10 Budget

This is a transcript of Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green’s media briefing on 2009-10 budget reductions/redirections - March 26

Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green

Good Afternoon. Thank you for being here on such short notice.
We had a number of requests about the meetings we had yesterday, so I thought it was best we spend some time together talking about those conversations.

Before I talk about what went on yesterday, I think it’s important to talk about what’s going on with the budget process. As many of you know, the budget process has many, many steps. This one is especially complicated due to the economic situation we find ourselves in.

Our staff started looking at preliminary information a few months ago. We were getting some sense that the economic downturn would impact the budget for the rest of this year and certainly for this upcoming year as well. We had to revert money for this school year back to the state because of the budget shortfalls.

The next major step for the budget process will be April 7, which is when I will make my presentation of the budget to the Board of Education. Because of what’s been happening this year, with the economic condition, we think it’s important to update the Board as we go along, so that they know what is coming up on April 7. Back at the board retreat in January we talked about some budget issues at that time. And then over the last few meetings we’ve given some budget updates as well.

After April 7, the Board will have work sessions and make a decision on the budget, and they will send to the County Commissioner. Their deadline for the Board is May 15, and the County Commissioners have until mid to late June.

The State’s budget operates on a different timeline, and in fact, doesn’t really have a timeline on the budget. What we are caused to do is to rely on the information we have. At this point, the information we have is the Governor’s proposed budget, which came out a few weeks ago. That budget certainly has increases in it, like salaries for teachers, principals and assistant principals. There are also pretty significant budget reductions.

At some point, hopefully, we will have a budget, but we don’t know when.  We believe we have to go forward and make some decisions as quickly as possible to know what next year’s budget will look like. And so, as a result, there were some decisions that were made and communicated to some employees yesterday.

Those communications included what we call workbooks which go out to principals so they can begin to make plans for next year. Those plans have what their staffing allotments will be, what their classroom teachers will be, any additional positions they will have and what sort of discretionary funds they may have. Because we are operating on incomplete information, the best we can tell them is we have decided to hold back certain things.

For example, we decided to hold back 50 percent of the student weighted formula dollars. Those are the discretionary dollars schools get. Normally, 25 percent of those dollars are held back, so we want to be a little more cautious this year and hold back 50 percent and allow them to make the decisions on the other 50 percent. There are also positions we decided to hold back as well. Those positions included instructional technological facilitators. There are 11 that are allocated by the district. We decided to hold those back. If you recall at the last board meeting we are going to create some new positions in our regions, including five new regional technological coaches. In addition, we also made the decision to hold back 64 positions of media assistants. We also made the decision to hold back 7.5 ESOL teachers, and a total of 7.5 positions for testing coordinators, which are at the high school level. Media assistants are all grade levels – elementary, middle and high, as well as ESOL positions.

Certainly as we go through this process there are a few important things to know. As you can see it’s a wide gamut of positions at the school-base level, from technology, to assistants in the media center, each and every one of these positions is important for our schools. There’s no question about that. But when we have to deal with these budget reductions, we’re having to make some tough decisions, and so what we’ve decided to do is, at this point, allow opportunities for those employees to have plenty of time for us to help find other positions in the organization.

Certainly, as the budget process continues, if things turn out to be not as tough as it appears now – for example, if legislature decides to put more dollars back into education and make the discretionary cut for school districts that the Governor has, which for us is a $7 million reduction, a lesser amount, then our intention is to provide more resources to our schools. So we’d be able to, appropriately, fund more positions at the schools.

We want to ensure that our employees, to the best we can, find homes within GCS. Perhaps not in their current position; for example if an instructional technology facilitator has a teaching certificate to be a classroom teacher we would try to place that person in a classroom teaching position; for a media assistant, perhaps trying to place them in a teaching assistant position as those vacancies occur. And so that’s what those conversations were about yesterday – is to try to be sure the employees, before they heard from anywhere else, heard from us – the superintendent and his designee. That’s why those conversations occurred yesterday and certainly I hope folks respect that that’s the way we tried to make that happen.

As I indicated, the next step is to not leave hard-working employees out there not knowing what’s going to happen. We’ll have constant communication and updates to employees as opportunities become available and or if in fact more money becomes available. This is no doubt a tough time for employees, for all employees. In fact, because of the way we do our presentations [at board meetings]; one of the things that came out was the fact that perhaps we were looking at classroom teachers and the need to make adjustments that way.

You can tell from my conversation today that we’re not looking to make any adjustments for K-12 classroom teachers. The allotments that went out to schools and the allotments regarding classroom teachers is the same as last year. Now, a specific school might have an impact because their school enrollment might not be the same as it was the previous year, and so they may have fewer students and therefore fewer teachers. But that is a normal thing that occurs in any school district and certainly in Guilford County Schools.

This is also difficult because we’re telling employees things before final decisions are made. So, we’re telling employees your job may be impacted, it may go away, and that’s a difficult conversation to have because we can’t give 100 percent certainty about what might come down the road. We think it’s important to give that information to our employees as early as can be. Again, the Board of Education, the County Commissioners and the State have to make decisions about our budget.
One thing that will be important is the following: as we go through this process, I think it will be significant, and I’m talking to media now, that we get out accurate information. This is not an easy time for our employees. It is critical we get out accurate information. I made myself available this afternoon so that we can have conversations and get out accurate information. If we need to follow-up with individuals to get more information, we’ll try our best to make that happen. It’s too important for our community, for our employees and especially for our students not to have anything but accurate information.

Questions from the Media

How are the eliminations distributed?
Again, these are potential budget cuts we’re doing at the school house level. For the media assistants there are 64 positions. I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but there are media assistants at the elementary, middle and high school levels. For the ESOL teachers, those are all at the elementary level. For the testing coordinators, those are all at the high school level and for the instructional technology coordinators; those are coming from the middle school level.

So, the 11 instructional technological coordinators that are allocated at the district level could face potential budget cuts?
That’s correct. But remember we are creating positions, one in each region, so there will be five positions for regional instructional coaches.

Is there a dollar amount available that these potential budget cuts would save?
At the school level, it’s about $2.9 million that we’re able to hold back at this point.

How much would holding back 50 percent of the student weighted formula dollars save?
That would allow us to hold back about $6 million.

Are all the positions that you would hold back filled positions or are some of them vacant?
Not all the positions are filled. For example, with media assistants about 47 of those positions are filled positions. I believe most of the other positions are filled at this point, but now until the end of the year, there could be some turnover in those positions.

When would these employees know for sure if their jobs will be impacted?
At this moment, I can’t give you a clear sense on that because we don’t know when the state, which is 60 percent of our budget, will make its final budget decisions. What I can tell you is that we’ll be working long and hard to see if we can find people homes in this organization.

How many administrative positions are being cut?
If you remember from a past board meeting, the Instructional Improvement Officers includes 10 positions. We talked about the Student Support Officer positions and that is another three positions. They have office support as well, which is another half dozen or so positions.

And those positions would be replaced with the regional staff?
Yes, that’s correct. There will be five regional superintendents, five executive directors; there will be office support positions for those positions as well and for the offices themselves. There will also be student support administrators and there will be five of those positions. And there will be those five regional instructional coaches that I talked about. The Enrichment Region also has a couple academic coaches and has an academic academy coordinator position as well.

Do you have a targeted percentage of administrative cuts?
I do not have a percentage of targeted cuts. With 80 percent of our budget dollars going to schools certainly we’re going to try and do as much as we can out of our administration. You will see the budget presentation on April 7, and I think people will see significant cuts from administration as well.