Clover Park Schools Could Lose 10 Teachers

Clover Park School District Superintendent Debbie LeBeau projected that the contracts of as many as 10 certificated employees will not be renewed for the 2011-12 school year during Monday’s school board meeting at the district's headquarters.

The district faces a $5.6 million shortfall and must adjust accordingly, she said in presenting the potential budget and staffing implications to the board, which approved the plan unanimously—and with little comment. The budget will take effect in July.

However, LeBeau said, the proposal was a “worst-case scenario” and there is a chance that fewer educators—or none at all—would be affected by the budget passed by the state Legislature and by how many classified employees choose not to return next year.

LeBeau said that the school district is unique in that it does site-based budgeting in “an extreme kind of nature.” Once the district budget is determined, money is allocated to the schools to determine staffing.

But, she said, “the time frame that that occurs in really puts us into a little bit of a crunch.”

By state law, school districts have until May 15 to inform their teachers unions of any reductions in force.

LeBeau said that going into the budgeting process, district officials asked, "How can we keep the cuts as far away from the classroom as possible?"

“We’re getting some good traction,” she said. “We’re making improvements in math; we’re increasing our graduation rate. We don’t want that to change, so we want to keep as many instructional staff as possible, so some of the cuts that we’re going to make are central cuts that aren’t impacting students in the classroom.”

The planned budget reductions include one full-time equivalent (FTE) central certificated employee and eight FTE classified employees for a savings of $550,000; non-employee-related cost reductions worth $2 million; and nine FTE classroom coaches and the enrollment impact of 10 FTE teachers for a savings of $1.52 million.

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.

Still, the $4.07 million falls short of the money needed to bridge the budget shortfall gap, so $1.53 million will be added from the district’s fund balance.

The Clover Park School District is projected to lose $1.2 million in money from Initiative 728; $1.4 million in K-4 enhancement funding; $2.1 million in federal stimulus; and $900,000 from enrollment loss, which is projected to be 183 full-time students for the 2011-12 school year.

LeBeau said that based on enrollment, five of the certificated reductions will come from the elementary schools, and the other five from the secondary level.

The district did not add as many new students as it was expecting this year—the growth was anticipated from military families—and therefore did not staff based on projected enrollment.

“So we did not take a loss,” LeBeau said. “We were pretty conservative that way.”

Also factoring in is that 23 full-time educators have announced their resignations or retirements, which LeBeau said logically would mean that the attrition would be plus-three, but it isn’t that easy. Some of the teachers have special-education endorsements or teach at a high school when the vacancies are at the elementary level, and some of the reductions are classified employees.

“Sometimes attrition takes care of all of those things,” she said, “but we don’t have all of that information on our classified staff yet.”

The date of notification for the layoff of classified employees is not until November, so LeBeau said that the district could end up overcutting if it makes all of its decisions now.

Monday’s meeting was the first time that the school board saw the staffing figures, as schools did not finish their budgets until Friday afternoon.

LeBeau emphasized that even with a $5.6 budget shortfall, class sizes across the district will not be bigger.

“We’re not cutting teachers and increasing class size,” she said, “and I think that’s pretty amazing.”

Also at Monday’s meeting, the school board approved a resolution to change the name of Alternatives for Individuals High School to Lakewood Career Academy.

The name change comes as the school enters into a new partnership with Clover Park Technical College that emphasizes high-school graduation and career-based planning.