Inglewood Board of Education grapples with budget deficit
Jonathan Kendrick | 4-5-2010 | Comments |
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After cutting over $7 million from next school year’s budget less than three weeks ago, the Inglewood Board of Education is continuing to reduce spending in the face of rising deficits. At a recent school board meeting, Inglewood Superintendent of Schools Gary McHenry said an additional $10 million could be slashed over the next three years.
“We have to save every dollar we can,” McHenry said at the meeting in late March. “We will only be filling critical positions right away so we can save as much as possible.”
The first round of budget cuts, approved during the board’s March 10 meeting, will eliminate 16 mostly administrative positions and reduce 88 hours per week of adult school classes.
The board also issued notifications to 91 Inglewood School District teachers, 51 of them in elementary schools, that they may not have their contracts renewed for the 2010-2011 school year.
Peter Somberg, the vice president of the Inglewood Teachers Association and a kindergarten teacher at Beulah Payne Elementary, said that while all 91 will not be laid off, the board is required to give teachers that may be terminated an advanced notification by March 15.
“More than likely it is the younger teachers that will be in danger of being laid off,” Somberg said, noting that the layoffs are based completely on seniority.
Somberg said the school district would then have to increase class sizes to make up for the reduction in teachers.
“We are of a mind that we want to keep the cuts as far away from the classroom as possible,” Somber said. “[Cuts] should be equitably done across all areas of the district including the non-teaching positions so that the students get the most benefit out of it.”
McHenry said that while the board has made cost cutting moves in other areas, teacher salaries are the district’s biggest expense.
“The money is in positions and benefits,” McHenry said.
“We need to take a look at salaries,” added board member Carol Raines-Brown.
Somberg said that while he understands some teachers may need to be laid off, he believes the board and other district employees should bear some of the cuts as well.
“We’ve been telling them to cut their travel allowances, to cut their consultants,” Somberg said about the board members. “Why do they need car allowances? [Teachers] don’t get car allowances.”
Ray Davis, an Inglewood resident that attended Wednesday’s board meeting, agreed.
“I think [the cuts] should start from the top,” Davis said.
Arnold C. Butler, the president of the school board, said that while cuts for teachers and district personnel are necessary, the board needs to search for creative ways to close the deficit.
“Because of the obliqueness of the situation, we can’t do business as usual,” Butler said at Wednesday night’s meeting. “But we just can’t cut our way out of this. Cutting is only one of the parts.”
One way the board is trying to save money is by driving down the prices of contracts they have with outside businesses.
The board rejected four bids for the district’s printing and copying services at Wednesday’s meeting, including one from Xerox that was nearly $30,000 lower than the company’s last contract with the city.
“We’re trying to work with them and Xerox is meeting them halfway,” said Manny Crutchfield, a Xerox production specialist who works with the Inglewood School District and attended Wednesday’s meeting.
Butler kept an optimistic tone about the district’s financial future, saying that the board is committed to making a paradigm shift in the way they do business.
“Our backs are to the wall and we have to come out swinging,” Butler said.
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