District 73 looks to cut/raise up to $2 million
Hawthorn Elementary District 73 officials are considering a broad package of spending cuts and revenue increases to bridge a shortfall of as much $2 million for the 2011-12 school year.
Like other districts, Vernon Hills-based Hawthorn has been hit by a drop in property values and other factors that have led to an expected gap between revenue and expenses. School leaders want to address the matter before it assumes a snowball effect.
The potential package of cuts includes some staff reductions and assumes help from teachers in renegotiating their contract. But district officials and others say they have crafted the plan to have the least impact on students.
“The first and foremost idea here is to keep our programs intact,” Brad Goldstein, director of finance and business operations, said last week during a community forum.
At that session, Goldstein and Superintendent Susan Zook laid out the nuts and bolts of school finance, showing a deficit of $1.5 million or more next year and more in following years.
“Everybody’s going to share the pain,” Zook said. “We have less revenue, we have greater expenses and we won’t have a balanced budget if we don’t make changes.”
Hawthorn expects to spend about $52 million this school year; about half of that is salaries.
Beth Palid, a substitute teacher who has two kids at Hawthorn Elementary North, attended the finance forum last week. “There are a lot of things they’ve proposed, and they all sound very reasonable,” she said.
How the gap would be bridged has been the topic of considerable discussion on several fronts.
A financial advisory task force, consisting of 25 parents, school board members, teachers, administrators and others, has met monthly to consider hundreds of ideas to reduce spending and increase revenue.
Among them are hikes to various fees to raise $200,000, and implementing an energy savings program to save $50,000, for example.
Charging tuition for full-day preschool and kindergarten sessions could raise $600,000, according to figures provided by the district, although that would not be realized immediately because of startup costs.
Simultaneously, administrators have been considering the impact of the suggestions on students and meeting with teacher union leaders to discuss contract implications.
“The idea is to open the contract for the purpose of negotiating salary. We cannot achieve our goal without their help,” Goldstein said. “If they say no, we obviously have to go to Plan B.”
As for staffing, administrators and nonunion staff members would receive raises of 3 percent instead of nearly 5 percent, according to the proposal.
Teachers would remain on the current salary schedule for next school year to save about $368,000. Teacher raises would average about 2.9 percent in that scenario rather than about 4.9 percent, Zook said.
Teachers who are eligible for retirement by the end of the contract in 2015 would not be affected, she added.
A proposed shift in the schedule for art, music and physical education would eliminate two teaching positions at a savings of about $100,000.
Nonteaching positions to be eliminated under the proposal include about 17 copy, teacher and health clerks to save about $290,000. Cutting more than two dozen part-time lunch/recess supervisors would save about $175,000.
If the proposal is not accepted, a reduction-in-force notification would be sent to 80 to 100 first- through third-year teachers.
The package will be presented to the board Feb. 28, but a vote isn’t expected until March 14 at the earliest, Zook said.