One week before a final vote, St. Paul school board members are second-guessing their school-friendly budget revisions.
At the board’s direction and amid parent complaints, Superintendent Valeria Silva’s team shifted millions of dollars to the schools and away from the district’s administrative offices.
On Tuesday, board members got a detailed look at the downside of that budget-cutting strategy.
They didn’t like what they saw.
Schools largely will be on their own when it comes to securing community partners, training teachers, communicating with families and more, Silva and her staff said.
All told, the budget up for final approval June 21 eliminates the equivalent of 72 full-time non-school positions, including the cabinet-level chief operations officer and one of four assistant superintendents.
“This is not what I want to recommend as the educational leader of this organization,” Silva said. “I know the schools want the money. I totally understand, but there’s a limited pot, and we are cutting to the bone.”
According to budget details released Tuesday:
• Facilities will lose 15 people, resulting in dirtier schools and delayed work orders.
• Special Education will shrink by 10.5 positions, spreading instructional coaches thin and increasing supervisor caseloads.
• Teaching and Learning will cut nine jobs, significantly reducing teacher training while cutting back on textbooks, sheet music and instrument repair.
• And in losing four people, Family Engagement will be less visible around the city and have less time and money to bring in community-based agencies.
Board members expressed appreciation for the detailed look but also concern about numerous departmental cuts. Whether they’ll make last-minute changes or look ahead to a more thoughtful process next year is unclear.
Steve Marchese is firmly in the latter camp.
“It’s not perfect, but this is probably as good as we’re going to get,” he said.
Jean O’Connell, too, was loath to keep tweaking the budget. If the board can’t accept the cuts Silva’s team decided to make, she said, “I think we’re trying to do somebody else’s job.”
Mary Vanderwert said the school board’s latest budget change, which last month sent an extra $85 per student to schools at the expense of district-level departments, won’t do much good.
One principal is spending that unexpected money to set up a robotics lab, she said. Meanwhile, the district is cutting by 64 percent its Parent Academy sessions, where they teach parents how to navigate the school system.
“He’s just going to buy some stuff,” Vanderwert said. “When I weigh that against Parent Academy, I just wonder if this is the direction we want to go.”
Chue Vue was especially concerned about the effects on students of color.
“I’m not sure we weighed the pros and cons in the direction we want to go,” he said.
At several points Tuesday, board members challenged the wisdom of various program and departmental budget cuts. Silva responded, again and again, that she didn’t want to make the cuts, either.
“The direction was, ‘Eliminate as much as you can,’” she said.
On Friday, the chair of the Parents of African American Students Advisory Council wrote board members to say their proposed budget will hurt students of color. Besides reduced Parent Academies, the Office of Equity will reduce direct services for black male programming, among other cuts.
“In a school district that’s already having trouble with racial equity, why would you take the money out of the Racial Equity office? To me, it seems like they’re not really interested in racial equity,” Bridget Moore said in an interview Monday.
Silva’s administration and board members have been in cost-cutting mode for months as they’ve looked to close a $15.1 million shortfall on a $518 million budget.
As it stands, the schools will bear just $2.4 million of the cuts by eliminating school-day teacher collaboration time at select schools serving grades K-8. (They’ll lose another $1.8 million for declining enrollment.)
The share of spending cuts for central-office departments and programs is $9.9 million.