Naperville Sun 3/12
145 D204 teachers to be cut; class sizes to grow
Officials say class sizes to increase
Class sizes in Indian Prairie District 204 are expected to increase next year as a result of 145 teachers being laid off because of a lack of state funding.
In a message to the District 204 community Thursday afternoon, Superintendent Kathy Birkett outlined what the state budget cuts will mean for students and employees.
"With 80 percent of our budget in staffing expenses, budget cuts will impact our teaching staff. Although difficult to think about in this economy, we must reduce staff. In order to achieve a savings, we must look at class sizes across the district," Birkett wrote.
By releasing 145 non-tenured teachers, the district will be reducing the number of teaching positions by 6.5 percent. That means class sizes will increase. At the elementary level, the proposal calls for increasing the maximum class size in second through fifth grades by two from 29 to 31. At the secondary level, the average class size will increase by two, she said.
"We already receive and spend 20 percent less per student than our peers, so cutting more is difficult," board President Curt Bradshaw said. "However, we owe it to our taxpayers to live within our means just as they are striving to do."
The district also plans to cut 6 percent of building level administrators and 14.4 percent of central office staff. Also proposed is a pay freeze for all administrators and cutting all administrators' budgets.
Other cost-cutting measures include:
• Audit: a dependent eligibility insurance audit and claims audit, which is expected to provide a savings of $1 million. The audit was the recommendation of the Citizens Financial Advisory Committee.
• Fees: proposed is a small increase in registration and technology fees. The district is also looking at adding or increasing extracurricular fees to save some programs that would otherwise need to be eliminated.
• Implementation of a four-day work week this summer.
• Delays: new projects in building maintenance and technology will be delayed.
"Thankfully our schools are relatively young and we are not facing major structural needs, but work to maintain the structural integrity of our schools cannot be delayed indefinitely," Birkett wrote. "We are also planning to delay some technology projects that would place new equipment in our schools. Delaying the technology refresh cycle limits student learning as they will be using older equipment and software."
Earlier this year the district closed a $9.2 million deficit in the 2011 budget through a variety of means. Those cuts included elimination of some positions, consolidation of classes and delaying some expenditures.
"We have prioritized instruction and have tried to examine all areas against the criteria of minimal impact to students. However, budget cuts of this magnitude are difficult," Birkett wrote. "When you are forced to trim $21.4 million from your budget in a single year, it becomes impossible to not have an impact on our students."
Bradshaw said the cuts are necessary to live within the budget.
"We don't find any part of this process enjoyable," Bradshaw said. "The governor dealt us a bad hand, and our only choice is to play with what we are given."
The board of education is expected to hear a presentation on the budget at its March 22 meeting. In addition, the district has created a section on its Web site for budget information and updates. Budget information can be found at ipsdweb.ipsd.org/Subpage.aspx/Budget.
. The SD will point out that they have a Financial Advisory Committee (or whatever they're calling it today) that helped them arrive at their point. We all know from serving on these committees before that it's garbage in garbage out. The SD leads the flock to what they want and refuse to listen to any legitimate recommendations (hence the 3rd high school that the Citizen's Advisory Committee did not want to recommend).