To close a $1.16 million gap for the coming fiscal year, Charlottesville City Schools will eliminate the elementary Spanish program, not fill two vacant positions and cut six instructional assistant positions at the second-grade level, as well as three other jobs.
The city School Board on Thursday pledged to bring back the Spanish program and other positions when finances improve. City and state revenues have taken a hit following the outbreak of COVID-19. After a 30-minute discussion, the board approved the amended $88.89 million budget and associated cuts. The board held a closed meeting last week to discuss personnel issues.
“We could nickel and dime this until December,” board Chairwoman Jennifer McKeever said, adding that all of the cuts are devastating. “The superintendent has made the best of a terrible situation.”
Superintendent Rosa Atkins said 14 of the 17 employees whose jobs are being cut have been placed in other positions within the school system, and the division is working with the remaining three employees to find other jobs. In addition to unspecified operational budget cuts, the division would save $1,163,029 — nearly half of which comes from eliminating the Spanish program.
The specific cuts, first mentioned at Monday’s City Council meeting, were detailed publicly for the first time at Thursday’s board meeting and after a public hearing on the amended budget. Speakers at the virtual meeting were concerned about the lack of public input and transparency of the cuts.
“I just wanted to share my concern that these proposed cuts were not shared with the community, as really the community is the primary stakeholder in all of this,” said Carol Busching, a Charlottesville teacher. “So we really didn’t know to prepare statements of support for our colleagues and friends who are losing their jobs.”
Parents also spoke in favor of keeping the Spanish program.
“There’s so many benefits to starting language at a young age, and I think it’s really important that we not be shortsighted right now and make a panic motivated decision,” said Kristin Johnson, a parent of two children at Burnley-Moran Elementary.
Margarita Figueroa said the program unites the community and lessens disparities.
“I really urge you to do whatever you can to create a different way to sustain our school but keep the Spanish speaking program,” she said, to no avail.
Lashundra Bryson Morsberger was the lone dissenting vote on the amended budget. She asked to delay Thursday’s vote to give the public more time to absorb the information. The other board members did not discuss her request.
State code requires school system budget requests to be adopted by May 15.
Earlier in the meeting, Morsberger said she wasn’t comfortable cutting the Spanish program and wanted more details about the budget.
“I feel like in a time like this, there needs to be a more thorough examination of the budget and what we’re willing to cut,” she said. “I think that the Spanish language program is important and has been on the chopping block several times.”
The division is projecting a $2.5 million shortfall for next year as revenues decline during the COVID-19 pandemic. An additional $1.3 million from City Council approved Wednesday covers about half of the deficit. The city will now contribute $58.6 million to the school division next year.
The division’s priorities in deciding where to cut were addressing non-discretionary and critical expenses, maintaining flexibility to address student needs and preserving the employment current staff and holding their salaries at the current level. Wages will be frozen for the next fiscal year.
Atkins said she believes in the value of the Spanish program for elementary students.
“It’s important that in every way that we can support our students in their growth and development to become bilingual because they’re not only citizens in Charlottesville, they are global citizens,” she said. “However, in this difficult time, they’re very difficult and hard decisions that we have to make.”
Charlottesville City Schools has taught Spanish to all elementary students since 2008, according to the division’s website.
Before voting on the budget, Leah Puryear, who served on the School Board during the Great Recession, and other board members expressed support and confidence in Atkins and how staff members decided on what to cut.
“She wanted the employees to have a raise,” Puryear said. “She wanted to maintain the integrity of all of our programs. She wanted to continue equity, and she is doing this by consulting with everyone that is involved.”
Board member Sherry Kraft said the cuts should be temporary and suggested that the division pursue community partnerships to ensure students are exposed in some way to a foreign language.
McKeever said she hopes the board can bring back the elementary program and make it stronger than before.
“I want nothing more than to have a robust foreign language element to our elementary school,” she said.
The amended spending plan is $369,958 more than the current operating budget but $3.2 million less than the funding request adopted in February.
After trimming the request, the division identified $1.9 million more in non-discretionary or critical expenses that cant’ be cut, as compared with the current budget. That includes increases in health insurance and retirement contributions, as well as four more teachers related to enrollment changes.
The additional $1.3 million from the City Council includes $468,000 to continue an expansion of the division’s gifted education program and $875,000 for operational expenses.
To balance the budget, Atkins recommended cutting a family engagement specialist, a counselor at Walker Upper Elementary and an instructional coach at Charlottesville High School.
The reduction in instructional assistants would mean every elementary school would have one for second grade as opposed to two. That’s one position that the division has been working to restore since it was axed during the recession.
“I think more than anything, I’m so frustrated at this,” McKeever said. “Everything that we’ve done in the past eight years to get us to this point where we’re able to look at our budget through an equity lens and really see how this impacts our students and families … I feel like we’re just falling back to 2009, and not because of a recommendation that Dr. Atkins has made but because of this situation that none of us have asked for.”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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