Hollister School District, San Benito County’s largest employer,
will be forced to cut expenses by $6 million over the next three
years in order to stay out of red ink and avoid a state takeover,
the district’s Chief Business Officer told board members
Tuesday.
Hollister – Hollister School District, San Benito County’s largest employer, will be forced to cut expenses by $6 million over the next three years in order to stay out of red ink and avoid a state takeover, the district’s Chief Business Officer told board members Tuesday.
The proposed cuts drew immediate concern for parents at the meeting who worried that they will lead to increased class sizes. With cuts looming, Chang So and several other parents urged the board to develop a creative plan to make sure those reductions won’t further jeopardize the education of the district’s 6,062 students.
“I believe in the public school system, I am a product of the public schools, but I will not sacrifice my child’s education,” said So, the parent of a Ladd Lane kindergartner.
Though HSD trustees have know for months there would have to be extensive cuts to balance the district’s budget in the future, Tuesday’s meeting was the first time they saw a concrete number. The district will make $1 million in cuts next year and $2 million the following year. During the 2008-2009 school year, the district will make have to make $3 million in cuts, according to budget projections.
Despite the grim projections, board members remain confident that they can make the necessary cutbacks before it’s too late to avoid state takeover, Board of Trustees President Margie Barrios said.
“These cuts cannot come from any other place than salaries and benefits,” she said. “Losing people is not something we want to do, but the board will consider everything.”
According to the latest budget projections, teacher and staff salaries account for about 85 percent of the school’s $42 million annual budget. Sweeping cuts have already been made over the past three years to the remaining 15 percent of the budget, Barrios said.
District Superintendent Ron Crates, who has been on the job for six weeks, is working on plans to balance the district’s budget, Barrios said. She was not familiar with the details of the plans, but said any cuts would be made with input from a committee of concerned community members, which will be made up of teachers, parents, board members and district staff. The community committee, which board members began forming slightly more than a month ago, is expected to be finalized within the next two months.
“We cannot make rash decisions; we need input from the community,” Barrios said. “And when we finally make decisions, it will be because the community feels they are the best decisions.”
Although Barrios believes the board has made considerable progress on plans to balance the district’s budget during the last three months, several teachers and parents expressed concern about large class sizes, specifically at Ladd Lane School, that resulted from too few teachers and too many students, district officials said.
So told the board he was concerned about his daughter’s education in a class of 35 students, which several teachers agreed was too many students for quality attention. When So had enrolled his daughter in kindergarten, he believed she would be in one of four classes at the school. He was disappointed when the four classes were squeezed into three, and when he learned that his daughter was still wearing a name tag everyday during the fourth week of school, he decided to address the board.
Although he would like to keep his daughter in public schools, So said he would be forced to consider private schooling if conditions did not improve. After hearing about the $6 million in future cuts, So said he was “very concerned” about the future of the district and his daughter’s education.
So and other parents told the board that they believe large class sizes is one of the reasons so many students are leaving the district.
And at Tuesday’s meeting, board members heard a report about exactly that issue. Assistant Superintendent Peter Gutierrez presented a detailed report on how the district has lost slightly more $4 million in revenue over the last three years as a result of the high number students living within the district’s boundaries who are transferring to other school districts. Gutierrez showed that the district has seen a net loss of 863 students during that time due to inter-district transfers. Most of the parents who requested the transfers cited job or childcare as their primary reasons for leaving.
So and several of the other parents at Tuesday’s meeting believe that some of these transfers were the result of parents being fed-up with the district and large class sizes.
He said that if parents were frustrated by large class sizes at the kindergarten level and transferred their student to other districts at an early age, the district would continue to lose students – and revenue. So believes that after kindergarten many parents would be hesitant to transfer their students back into the Hollister School District.
“If you treat a school district like a business, you realize that you need to bring in more customers,” So said. “More parents will keep their kids in Hollister if they have a good initial experience (with the district).”
Jan Grist, President of the Hollister Elementary Teachers Association, suggested the board look into the reasons for inter-district transfer and try to get a handle on the lost revenue.
“We need to try to increase revenue and avoid cutting teachers,” Grist said. “Parents need to realize that when they pull their children out, they are crippling the district.”
Brett Rowland covers education for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or br******@fr***********.com.
