WCSD board raises concerns over budget cuts that would affect students

The Washoe County School District Board didn't take action on a $19.1 million deficit during a special budget workshop on Tuesday morning. Instead the school board had a laundry list of questions on proposal cuts that would directly affect students.

District staff brought the board a plan that would have reduced the deficit by $14.1 million through the elimination of 44 positions, expanding elementary and middle school walk zones by a quarter-mile and other budget reductions.

The district has until April to file a tentative budget with the state and until June to file a finalized budget.

The district said employees in positions marked for elimination will be given two years to find a new position inside the district, leave the district or retire.

Six of the 44 positions will be transferred to grant funding.

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But the board was concerned that many positions marked for elimination are ones that directly affect students, including 10 teachers for students learning English and 4.5 school counselor positions.

Trustee Veronica Frenkel specifically took issue with the district’s proposed cuts to its teachers for English language learners.

Chief Academic Officer Debra Biersdorf said that the district was working to streamline the English language learners program. Her department had already been questioning if there was a better “model” they could use for the program.

Chief Financial Officer Mark Mathers told the board that district staff had done a comparison between the English language learning programs at Washoe and Clark counties and found that Clark’s students showed better results with less teachers per student.

“I appreciate efficiency is a goal, but I also recognize that we have a huge hill to climb in meeting the needs of these students,” Frenkel said, noting that she had to learn English as a second language after moving to the United States when she was 6.

Frenkel charged district staff with finding cuts that don’t affect the classroom. She specifically wanted more information on freezing administrative salaries over $120,000 and even floated the idea of eliminating administrative positions.

“If we were to be eliminating positions at a higher level we would probably be saving positions,” she said.

Superintendent Traci Davis said the district’s executive staff has gone without pay raises for two years.

President of the Washoe Education Support Professionals Melissa Boesen told the Reno Gazette Journal that she thinks more cuts can be made on the administrative side.

Her group represents student support professionals in the district, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers and custodians. Six positions flagged for cuts fall under her organization’s purview.

“One cut from an administrator would take care of the six people I’m here to represent,” she said.

She said the same would hold true for many of the teaching positions on the chopping block.

In her opinion, cuts should always come from the top before they come from the people working in the trenches of the school district.

Trustees also asked district staff to bring back more information on proposed cuts and other areas for potential cuts.

Trustees said they weren’t opposed to the district’s proposed plan, which would have reduced the deficit to just $5 million, but they said they just needed more context before deciding.

Chief Financial Officer Mathers said he didn’t expect the board to approve a plan today.

He told the board that his department will bring back answers to their questions at a still yet-to-be-scheduled budget workshop at the end of March.

“At that point we will have to get serious about adopting a tentative budget,” Board President Katy Simon Holland said.