— School board’s plan cuts 70 school positions, 3 central office slots as ‘bureaucracy motors on’—
More details of the plan to reduce headcount came out at the April 8, 2024 School Board “Working Session.”
During a discussion about 2024-2025 school year allotments, it was announced that there would be a reduction of 73 positions with 70 of them coming from our excellent schools and 3 from the central office. For more detail with individual schools see the numbers below or on the BoE’s website: https://simbli.eboardsolutions.com/Meetings/Attachment.aspx?S=4067&AID=1631293&MID=116538
The system is forecast to have 217 less students next year or 1.1% less. The 70 reduced school based positions is from a workforce of 2,182 positions or 3.2% less. The Central Office is cutting 2-and-a-half positions out of almost 200 positions (or 0.6%) with the half position filled by an already retired person who was collecting salary on top of their full retirement.
Reasonable people should be disappointed by this information.
While the recording of the meeting is not available at the writing of this article — which is 48 hours after the meeting — it’s hard to believe there is sound rationale behind this plan.
Having been part of teams that have had to reduce costs and people, the work is never easy nor fun when people’s livelihoods are on the line. However, the customer has always been focus number one.
In this case, it appears to me the opposite is true. The classroom is bearing the brunt of the reductions while the bureaucracy motors on. To be clear, central office work is often necessary, but classroom work is vital. If we could not reduce central office work, how can the central office team rationally say that our already heavily taxed teachers can do more?
What data requests. documentation demands, PLC presentation, and other duties are going to go away to offset the work of larger class sizes? In recent years many of our schools…
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