Fiscal Facts-4527
Published April 29, 2010
In an effort to help the Williamson County community better understand the budget and the budget process, IN FOCUS has launched a new feature called Fiscal Facts. The purpose of this section is to answer any questions you might have, or rumors you may have heard, regarding the 2010-2011 budget. Simply EMAIL your questions to us and we will respond to them in upcoming issues of IN FOCUS.
Since our last issue of IN FOCUS, we received several questions regarding the budget:
I don’t understand why there are budget cuts when we are one of the two states that received a lot of money from the government for education. Where is that money going?
Williamson County, based on its small percentage of free and reduced lunch students, does not qualify for a lot of federal funding. Most federal funding to states is based on this number. To meet the requirements to be considered a free and reduced student, your family must meet certain income levels. Williamson County does not have many families that meet these requirements. I believe you may be thinking of the latest amount of money that has been talked about in the news for Race to the Top. Williamson County Schools only qualified for approximately $330,000 of the half billion that the state received. This amount is to be distributed over four years Also, the Race to the Top money is not in our budget that we are currently presenting so our budget does not reflect the consideration for these funds.
How much money from "Race to the Top" will Williamson County receive and what impact will this have on the budget? Does this money have a special designation that was stipulated in the federal proposal?
If we accept it, the amount allotted to us was $330,000 over four years which equates to $82,500 per year. This amount of money does not provide any impact to the budget based on the stipulation of uses for these funds. We have over 2,000 teachers so this would not go very far. These funds also carry with them requirements for reporting to state and federal authorities.
I have two children at Trinity Elementary and I am wondering how the cuts in personnel and the proposed cuts in the Specials programs are going to affect our kids. The quality of education is what I am most interested in maintaining. I want to make sure that class sizes are not going to be affected either.
The proposed cuts for the elementary school consist of personnel with .5 academic specialist at each school being cut and reducing the number of teacher assistants that an elementary earns. At present, an elementary earns one teacher assistant for every 125 students. This ratio for earning was raised to 150 students. For Trinity, there will be a reduction of one teacher assistant using the new ratio. There will also be a reduction in the amount of money that the elementary receives from the district for materials, supplies and equipment. However, over the last couple of years, schools have been frozen from the use of these same funds to help get us through these tight times and we do not feel at this time this will cause a great impact in the quality of our instruction. We have always used the states mandated classroom size for the elementary. This was not affected this year at all.
With everyone mowing their yards lately, I noticed at Longview that it seems the grass is not cut as one might think it should be. What is the yearly budget for grounds maintenance (lawn mowing) at Longview Elementary alone?
All schools are on the same grounds maintenance program. All schools are mowed the same amount of times each year. Currently, the budget provides for all schools to have 17 mowings between April through October. Basically, we schedule mowings every 10-15 days depending on rain, drought and growing conditions. This standard applies to all schools, including Longview. This commodity is currently going through the bid process and based on the bids that we receive, the number of mowings will increase or decrease accordingly because we have already submitted our budget and it has been approved by the School Board. At the present time, the yearly grounds budget for Longview Elementary is $6,600.
In your last issue of IN FOCUS you wrote:
- Being mindful of current economic conditions, a diligent effort was made to reduce a status quo budget to one that still maintains the integrity of instructional programs. We accomplished this through: deletion of certain district-wide and support positions (16), raising the PTR at the middle and high schools by reducing the number of teachers after the normal PTR was established and reducing certain specials at the elementary level, and substantial change in the amount and methodology of distribution of site based funds.
What was the old and what is the new PTR for middle and high schools?
The 2009-2010 "old" PTR for High School was roughly 21.7:1 for the larger schools, 17.5:1 for Fairview High, 18.1 for Page High and 15.1 for Middle College High. We proposed to keep the same PTR but reduce two teachers at each of the large high schools and one teacher at each of the smaller high schools. The 2009-2010 “old” PTR for Middle School ranged from 20 to 20.5 per school. The new PTR for the middle schools is the same but reducing each school by one teacher.
What specials at the elementary schools are being reduced?
A .5 academic specialist at each of the elementary schools was reduced. Also, the number of teacher assistants at the elementary schools was reduced.
How does increasing our ratios and decreasing our special subjects maintain the integrity of our instructional programs?
The impact on the amount of these current reductions is not considered material to the instructional program. However, further reductions to these items could result in the instructional program being affected.
Instead of changing your personnel numbers, have you looked at decreasing your benefits to employees or competitively bidding your healthcare?
Benefits include health, dental and life insurance for our employees, retirement and required social security payments. The retirement benefit is mandated, and the amount the employer is required to pay by law was significantly increased by the state. The state also requires that we provide a certain level of medical insurance comparable to the state’s program. Our program, currently through Williamson County’s self insured plan, meets the state’s requirement. We competitively bid the insurance program about five years ago with the results equating what we paid for our county’s health insurance program. We would not be able to competitively bid this prior to the end of this budget process to result (even if it did) in a decrease to our budget. We would still have to incur costs for the run off of our current program in addition to a new program and this would not be the year to incur this increased cost. If a change to these standards were to occur, it would have to be at the state level.
Over the last five years, corporations across the nation have significantly increased the employee paid portion of their healthcare plans. What has Williamson County Schools done to transfer this cost?
Under state law, this is a negotiated item in the WCS-WCEA (teacher) contract. The contract currently states that the county pays for individual coverage and the employee will share in the family plan up to 20 percent of the imputed premium. We are currently in negotiations with the teacher union and will be addressing this particular issue.
What type of tax increase would be needed to maintain the CLASSROOM affected changes as noted in question 1 and 2?
We initially prepared a status quo budget with no reductions and it amounted to approximately $225.5 million. This would add an additional $5.4 million in needed funding to our current request of approximately $10.8 million or the equivalent of nine more cents on the tax rate.
The newspaper stated that 26 positions have been cut (16 district and 10 at the school level). Can you explain what the 10 other positions are? I'm one of three support staff being cut at a local school due to rezoning that has not yet been placed at the new school for which my school is zoned and it's my understanding that other schools have lost multiple support staff positions. The concern in the community is that there are lots more than 10 positions that have been or will be cut.
Our personnel structure is very complex. The budget includes a net loss of 10 positions at the school level. There were 16 positions that were eliminated that served within the central office or district-wide. These include a director, secretaries and some teachers that were considered district-wide such as the Reading Recovery locally funded and teacher mentors. The remaining 10 positions at the school are a combination of increases and decreases resulting from growth and the elimination of positions. For example, we changed the pupil/teacher assistant ratio from 125 to 150. If your school did not grow, you probably lost a teacher assistant. However, if your school was projected to grow, you either earned an additional or kept the same. The net effect of this change resulted in the reduction overall of 17.3 teacher assistants, even with placing teacher assistants within the new schools. The change in the PTR reduced the number of teachers at both the middle school and high school, but again, if growth occurred in a particular school, you may not physically see that reduction and in other schools, based on rezoning, it may be very obvious. The academic specialists at each of the elementary schools that had them have been eliminated. The new schools caused increases in things like library assistants, principals, bookkeepers, secretaries and nurses.
So to answer your question, it is a combination of placing new positions in new schools and where growth occurred and reducing or eliminating certain positions in others for a net school level reduction of 10.