By Reid Heavner,
Staff Writer.
In the midst of a widely publicized district-wide budget crisis of huge detriment, the Santa Rosa City Schools Board of Education has approved a new plan for fiscal survival. The plan promises over $16 million in cuts to school programs and staff budgets. The cuts include huge staff layoffs, with the district slated to let go of 112 employees.
Though the savings come from varied reductions, many of the biggest cuts we will see on campus next year come from staffing reductions. Notably, the district plans to save over $2 million from cutting school-based therapist positions and another $2 million from compacting the number of students in classes to an astonishing level of nearly 36 per section. The district is looking to save a further $1.6 million by eliminating co-taught classes and $1.5 million by reducing elementary staffing to the contractual minimum. At Santa Rosa High, we expect to lose 67 of our current 280 sections next year. The district has proposed these and 17 other cuts to district-wide spending, totaling over $16 million in savings to keep the district out of state takeover.
This new wave of cuts includes some of the most significant reductions from the district office that we’ve seen so far. The proposal includes five separate provisions to “reduce and restructure [the] district office,” cutting a total of seven jobs at the district level. This follows immense community pressure last year to put the district financial crisis on the back of the district office rather than students and teachers.
The board meeting on Feb. 11 met other discussions for how to keep the district afloat. The district put forward their “three district plan,” which would consolidate multiple school district administrations in Santa Rosa into a single unified district. The hope would be for this to save money in administration costs, both for us and other districts. As far-fetched as it may seem, other districts have expressed willingness to explore this concept further as the financial troubles seem to go beyond our district alone.
Another consideration is the recent discussion of the board’s “A-G for all” policy. The policy, which requires that all high school graduates pass the “A-G” admission requirements for UC and CSU colleges, has long been hailed by some as a fundamental source of financial problems. Critics argue that students who are not interested in going to college are driven away from our high schools by the policy, resulting in lower total enrollment and funding. “The assumption is that every kid goes to college and that isn’t the reality for every child, and providing that pathway is a good thing, but we also need to provide pathways for those who that is not their goal or their family’s goal,” said counselor Adam Derum. The Board of Education discussed the policy at their Feb. 11 meeting, with some in the community hoping that it will repeal the current policy.
