SHERBURNE – Though it’s early in the budgeting season for school districts, members of the Sherburne-Earlville Central School District Board of Education proved there’s no time like the present to begin discussing ways to cut costs for next year.
Led by a suggestion from Patrick Dunshee, the board spent about 40 minutes discussing whether or not to fill a middle school assistant principal’s position. The position could become vacant if the current administrator were to be selected to fill the recently vacated principal’s post.
That position was left open on Sept. 8, the day before school began.
The district is currently in the processing of interviewing 20 candidates for principal. Middle School Assistant Principal Jolene Emhof has been filling in.
At budget setting time last May, the district saved just over $241,000 for the 2009-2010 school year in faculty cuts, or about 3 percent of the current $27.8 million budget, according to Assistant Superintendent Thomas Strain. Four teaching positions were eliminated.
With 300 fewer students in the district since 1999 and the ratios of administrator to student and administrator to teacher continuing to drop, Dunshee said the board should consider restructuring, sharing duties and doing the same amount of work with less people.
“It’s the way life is. Everybody has to do it to save money. And this is a perfect opportunity for us to do it,” he said.
Board member Thomas Caton said the district should find savings that would have less of an impact on academics.
“Taking out a key administrator is not the way to go,” he said, adding that it would be “easy to save $80,000 (the position’s salary) elsewhere.”
Superintendent Gayle Hellert said while it would be “difficult to comprehend one supervisor for that many (330) students,” the idea of restructuring administrative functions “is a good one.”
“We need to take into consideration the ultimate cost to our school and administration for this kind of change,” she said.
High School Principal Keith Reed said the assistant principal’s job is not just about discipline. “We don’t do discipline like other districts. For us, discipline is an opportunity to make a connection with that kid. It’s not just about numbers; education has changed. We are doing counseling, medical and dealing with lots of social issues. This would be a huge step backwards to where we’ve gone in the last five years. If you want to progress further I think you have to fill the position.”
Dunshee stressed that the entire district’s administration was “top heavy” and needed restructuring, not just middle school. “I know for a fact we can do better,” he said.
New school board member Susan Osborne said when she ran for office that cutting administration was the number one topic on voters’ minds.
The middle school has had a principal and assistant principal for about a half dozen years.
Strain said preliminary figures point to a 3 percent budget increase again for next year. An initial budget will be prepared for the board’s consideration in January or February, he said.
“We said last year during budgeting that if someone left, we’d have to consider whether or not we should be looking at our overall administrative structure,” he said. “Obviously, we are looking to keep tax levy as low as we possibly can.”