District 204 may eliminate 145 teachers, 19 administrators

Indian Prairie Unit District 204 may eliminate as many as 145 nontenured teachers and 19 administrators to offset projected budget deficits, officials said Thursday.

The tentative plan, which still requires school board approval, aims to slice an additional $12.2 million from next year's projected $288 million budget on top of the $9.2 million the district already has cut.

Superintendent Kathryn Birkett said administrators prepared the recommendations after setting priorities for instruction and trying to examine all expenses against a criteria of limiting the direct impact on students as much as possible.

The plan to be presented to the school board on March 22 calls for:

• eliminating 13.5 central office staff positions (or 14.4 percent) and 5.5 positions (or 6 percent) of building-level administrators;

• releasing 145 nontenured teachers (6.5 percent of the entire teaching staff);

• increasing average class size by two students from second grade through high school;

• increasing registration fees by $5 and technology fees by $10;

• implementing a pay freeze for all administrators and reducing their budgets;

• creating a four-day summer workweek for administrators;

• implementing closer reviews of insurance claims, expected to save about $1 million;

• and delaying any new building maintenance and technology projects.

Birkett said the proposals won't offset all of the projected deficit, but "we're working to get as close to $12.2 million as we can."

"Obviously we're also currently in negotiations with the teachers' association as well as our classified association so there are a lot of things that feed into what we'll do from this point forward," she said.

Birkett said the release of the plan in advance of the March 22 meeting is not an attempt to send a message to the two unions.

"This is not gamesmanship. This is reality. This is what we're dealing with right now," Birkett said. "We try to be very fair to our staff. I refer all the time to our District 204 family and this is a painful time for our school district. We need to be fair to people. These are people and these are people that have done a fine job here in the district."

Aside from increases in class size and teacher cuts, Birkett said every decision was consciously made to try to avoid affecting the classroom.

She did not specify what maintenance and technology projects may be put on hold.

"Any specific projects will be laid out in the plan on (March 22) but we recognize that things have to slow down and not happen as quickly and some projects will wait," she said. "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."

None of the projects will affect completion of the new Metea Valley High School scheduled for January 2011.

"There are separate funds that were approved in the referendum for the high school that are very different than funds that we're currently dealing with on a districtwide basis," she said.

Parents also will notice some changes in district fees. Administrators are proposing a $5 increase in registration and $10 increase in technology fees. They also are looking at adding or increasing extracurricular fees to save some programs that otherwise would be eliminated.

Class sizes would be increased by two students each at almost every grade level. In elementary schools, the proposal calls for increasing the maximum class size in second through fifth grades from 29 to 31. At the secondary level, the average class size also will increase by two.

"We have had worse class sizes in the district and we believe that class size is an easy thing for us to bring back depending on where the state lands (in terms of funding)," Birkett said. "But we feel we are well positioned now to deal with whatever the state brings us and we hope it all plays out to be much better."

The next budget update will be presented at the March 22 school board meeting and will be available on the district's Web site at http://ipsdweb.ipsd.org/Subpage.aspx/Budget.

District 204 covers portions of Naperville, Aurora, Plainfield and Bolingbrook.

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<li><a href="/story/?id=365357">New budget proposal makes Dist. 204 board members uneasy<span class="date"> [3/11/10]</span></a></li>

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