Clover Park Schools Avoid Teacher Layoffs

May 15 has come and gone — without any layoff notices in the Clover Park School District.

Despite facing a $5.6 million budget shortfall and projected deep cuts from the state Legislature, the district will not have a reduction in force among certificated teachers.

The “worst-case scenario” presented by Superintendent Debbie LeBeau to the school board last month called for the loss of up to 10 teaching positions.

By law, May 15 is the deadline for school districts to notify teachers that their contracts will not be renewed for the following year – unless the state fails to adopt a budget, as is the case this year. The deadline has been pushed back to June 15, but Clover Park already has a plan in place.

CPSD will account for the shortfall through attrition – retirements and resignations, said district spokeswoman Kim Prentice. The district will also use $1.53 million from its fund balance.

“We’re very fortunate,” Prentice said. “The priority from the school board has always been to not impact the classrooms.”

That does not mean that CPSD will not have cuts elsewhere, though. The budget reductions approved by the board in April include one full-time equivalent (FTE) central certificated employee and eight FTE classified employees.

The central certificated employee does not work at one specific school, and the district’s classroom-coach program will be reduced from 24 to 15 educators.

While LeBeau said that she was pleased that they would not be laying off any teachers or increasing class sizes, she called the situation bittersweet.

“It feels great that we’re not cutting any teachers, but without some kind of change at the state level, we’re not going to be able to keep going like this,” she said.

LeBeau said that the district would be able to manage for the upcoming 2011-12 school year, but would have to start looking “a little harder throughout the district” in the event of further cuts.

“It’s $5.6 million – and we knew that some of those were one-time monies, like the ($2.1 million federal) stimulus funding,” she said. “And we’re using about $1.5 million from our fund balance reserves – you can’t keep doing those things over and over.”

LeBeau said that it is beneficial to have the latter for “a rainy day like this – but it doesn’t replenish itself.”

“We’re delaying purchases; we’re delaying projects; we’re not going to do some of the things we were going to do.”

She said that CPSD is working hard to keep direct instructional support in place “because we’re getting some nice student achievement gains,” but added that they can only cut support staff back so much and keep functioning.

Prentice said that they would not know whether the shortfall will be larger until the Legislature’s special session ends – and there is the potential of a second special session in Olympia, too.

“I would say that our preference would always be that we would like to know because the more we know, the better we can plan,” she said. “But we also know we have to move forward and based on that, we’re being conservative and planning accordingly.”

Prentice said that they do not staff based on projected student  enrollment – the rumor of new housing being built on Joint Base Lewis-McChord or an apartment complex in town is considered intangible until “we actually see those little students.”

“We typically have been pretty conservative,” she said. “We look at how to best use our resources.”

LeBeau said that given the cuts to the classroom-coach program, some staff may have to transfer to other schools – but that is typical of any school year.

“We have to go where the students are,” she said.

Attrition for 2011-12 has not been higher than average, she said, but there have been more retirements and resignations than in 2010-11, when most employees opted to stay put because of the economy.

Neighboring school districts Tacoma and Puyallup also did not issue RIF notices as of May 15, but Bethel laid off 17 teachers.