Budget Choices Reviewed by Plymouth-Canton School Board

Members of Plymouth-Canton Community Schools' board of education are working in a kind of limbo. They must decide the 2011-12 budget, without an true idea of how much money will come from the state.

The board must finalize the district's budget by June 30. The state's budget often isn't approved until fall. This year, Gov. Rick Snyder is pressing lawmakers to finalize the state's budget by the end of May.

This week, state lawmakers are holding conferences to determine which of three separate state budget proposals will ultimately become law. Gov. Snyder has offered one budget while the Senate and House have each passed similar bills. All cut school funding and in the Plymouth-Canton district, an estimated $18 million could be trimmed from a $162 million annual budget.

During a special meeting held Tuesday evening at Discovery Middle School, school board members, with newly hired interim superintendent Jeremy Hughes, listened to four district officials review cuts and explain how each might help the district.

Harry Lau, the district's maintenance and operations director, told the board that shift changes would help maintain some services after as many as 21 custodians are let go. Under the current proposed cuts, Lau's department will also lose four building and grounds workers. He said cleaning would still be done. Lau worked with Betty Bloch, the district's community education supervisor, to coordinate how night classes and other events would be handled after the cuts.

Bloch said schools will be asked to limit night events to once a week or less; groups, such as Boy Scout troops, that have been using the buildings for free will be charged a minimum of $10 per evening — and those now paying to use the space will pay about 30 percent more to use a school building.

The changes, she said, "will require a strong commitment on the part of the board and administration," she said. "These groups will not be happy they will be charged."

For student events that require more than one night, she said, the first night would be free but subsequent evenings would require some payment to cover the cost of overtime for custodians and other bills.

Ray Bihun, the district's human resources director, reviewed a plan to increase elementary class sizes — by two students in each classroom — and how those changes would include job cuts. (The school board voted in April to cut 269 jobs; some of those district employees may be called back to work before the next school year begins.) Bihun presented a range of options, some based on keeping Fiegel Elementary School open, and some based on closing that school, as well as how offering teachers a schools-of-choice option for students in first through third grades.

Hughes said he is not recommending all-day kindergarten the upcoming school year but anticipates the state will require it by 2012, cutting funding in half for those who do not comply.

Mike Bender, the district's director of secondary education, told the board that increasing class sizes for middle and high school students could result in savings of nearly $4 million. He said some classes would have to be cut. Bender used average class sizes and a student-to-teacher ratio as high at 35-to-1.

Those figures may be more theoretical than realistic, according to Jay Obsniuk, a Salem High robotics teacher. He said three of his classes this semester have 38 students each; he expects to see 40 or more students in some classes next fall after the district's budget cuts.

Barbara Rutecki, who teaches business classes at Salem High School, spoke during the meeting to ask the board members to reconsider cutting business classes.She said that while the business classes are considered electives, they are important opportunities for college-bound students considering business degrees.

"These classes are of great interest to the students," she said after the meeting.

Rutecki is one of the 269 district employees who received a pink slip in April — for the fourth time since she started working for the district nearly 11 years ago.

"I've never been laid off, but I have been called back two weeks before school started," she said. For now, Rutecki said, she's weighing her options in the near future — whether to return to a corporate finance job like she had 30 years ago when teaching jobs were scarce, or go back to school and reinvent her career.

"I'd rather be teaching," she said.

School officials on the district's finance committee meet at 8 a.m. today at the E. J. McClendon Educational Center, 454 S. Harvey St. in Plymouth. School board members have asked the administrators to create a line-item list of budget options, with estimated savings, a rationale for each and administrative recommendation.