[B]URLINGTON — Hundreds of concerned residents packed City Hall during Tuesday’s School Board meeting to protest planned staff cuts in the Burlington School District.
District officials are working to finalize a reduction in force that could result in 24 layoffs, or the equivalent of almost 16 full-time positions. The cuts are needed to help close a $2.5 million shortfall in the $84 million budget passed by city voters in March. Some layoffs may be avoided through retirements or resignations, officials said.
Superintendent Yaw Obeng said closing the budget gap was necessary to avoid state education tax penalties included in Act 46, the state’s recently passed education reform law.
Students and parents said money should be reallocated to avoid cutting teachers and educational staff. Ella Causer, a BHS junior, expressed concern about the reduced advanced placement course offerings that will result from the cuts.
“For colleges, if a class is offered and you don’t take the highest level, they will not look at the budget, at the cuts, that is not a consideration,” she said. If well-off families see a dip in course offerings, she said they may eventually abandon the city’s public schools leaving only students who don’t have other options.
People who spoke at the meeting demanded greater transparency in the budgeting process and said they felt blindsided by the decision to eliminate so many teaching positions.
Obeng, who started in the top job last September, said he would like to handle the budgeting process differently in the future. His ability to provide specifics was constrained by a shift in guidance from the Agency of Education late in the winter while the district was finalizing the budget.
There were 14 public hearings as the budget was being developed, Obeng said, and presentations from school commissioners at neighborhood planning association meetings explained the looming cuts.
A budget presentation delivered to the City Council in February and posted to the school board website noted that the budget anticipated eliminating as many as 18 teaching positions. The school budget passed with 70 percent of the vote.
Lauren Frazier, who has a child at Sustainability Academy, said the district has ignored calls for more detailed budget information that could further justify eliminating teaching positions, and said that makes it difficult to trust that officials are making the cuts as a last resort.
Nathan Lavery, the district’s finance director, said he will make more detailed information about the budget available early next month at the latest.
The positions being eliminated affect most of the district’s six elementary and two middle schools, but the lion’s share will be at Burlington High School, which has seen its enrollment decline by nearly a quarter over the past decade.
Teachers currently filling positions slated to be cut won’t necessarily be the ones laid off, because the teacher contract allows teachers with more seniority to “bump” their more junior colleagues.
Bobby Riley, principal of Integrated Arts Academy — who was lauded at the meeting for winning a Nationally Distinguished Principal Award — said the cuts were “tough to swallow,” especially because they were driven by “budget realities” and not educational best practices.
Riley said he appreciated Obeng allowing administrators to decide what positions to cut at their schools.
Burlington’s teachers are in the last year of their contract with the district, which will end June 30. The school board and Burlington Teachers Association declared an impasse in February and a mediation session in March did not result in a compromise.
