Superintendent on cuts: ‘Everything is on the table’
By Jeff Gallatin
North Olmsted
Published Oct. 4, 2006

School officials will be mulling potential cuts of up to $5.7 million including cutting 40 to 60 staff positions, eliminating the sports programs and closing district buildings at 4 p.m. if a proposed 6.5 mill operating levy on the November ballot doesn’t pass, North Olmsted Superintendent Kurt Stanic said.

“Everything is on the table with this,” Stanic said. “We’ve set up three different levels of cuts which are listed in degree of severity to district educational programs.”

A community meeting has been set for 7 p.m. Oct. 16 in the middle school auditorium for people to come and give input on the proposed cuts.

In the schedule being presented by Stanic and District Treasurer Robert Matson to the school board, the level three cuts and projected savings from them included cutting 40 to 60 staff positions, $3 million; eliminating sports $800,000; closing buildings at 4 p.m.; $200,000, for a total projected savings of $4,064,000 in level three.

Level two projected savings totaled $906,000 in areas such as limiting use of non-teaching substitutes, having one issue of the School Zone publication, cutting additional funds in classroom supplies and classroom expenditures, cutting half of staff development, eliminating student planners, cutting all non-emergency overtime, cutting privatized food service and the elementary lunch program; cutting all supplemental student activity programs, cutting the federal subsidy to federally funded programs and eliminating the summer enrichment program. The level one projected cuts were $732,000 in areas such as freezing hiring of non-essential personnel, cutting supplies and various travel programs, eliminating academic and community trips, professional organization reimbursement and selective consulting and professional contracts.

Stanic said specific people are not being targeted in the projected staff cuts.

“Most of our budget is people and staff positions,” Stanic said. “It would go across the board in all our programs and positions as the schedule currently stands. This would affect all our district as it stands right now.”

Stanic said the different levels of cuts are not in order of implementation, but instead outline his administration’s recommendations of the types of budgetary reductions necessary that would have to be implemented to eliminate the forecasted $5.7 million operating deficit for the 2007-08 school year.

“The order of cuts will be determined by the school board,” Stanic said. “This is something that the board wants to present to the community and discuss with it.”

Stanic said if the operating levy proposal does not pass in November, he would expect the district to start moving on the cuts.

“We drew up the schedule as a means of dealing with the potential deficits,” he said.

If the levy passes in November, Stanic said he would not expect to see those kind of cuts since the district could begin collecting the new levy funds in 2007. If not, the earliest the district could collect any levy funds from a passed levy is 2008, since state law prohibits a district from collecting funds until the calendar year after a levy passes.

This is the third time in 2006 the district has put an operating levy on the ballot and the fourth time in a calendar year. Voters rejected a combined operating/capital improvements levy in November 2005, separate operating and capital improvement levies in May and the 6.5-mill operating levy plan in August.

“We will have to keep coming back, as I’ve said with the current state of school funding in Ohio we aren’t going away,” Stanic said. “Our projections are that if we don’t get a levy passed, the reserve will be eaten away in short order.”

Stanic noted the levy committee has already held meetings with supporters and is attempting to draw support from throughout the community.

Mayor Thomas O’Grady, a former North Olmsted middle school teacher who co-chaired an earlier levy campaign with Stanic, said he’s lending his support again.

“People are indeed overtaxed nowadays, but the sad truth is until we get the method of school funding in Ohio fixed by the state legislature we need to pass levies to maintain a quality educational system,” O’Grady said. “We can’t penalize the students because of the legislature’s lack of action in fixing a problem they’ve been told four times by the courts is wrong.”