200 Protest District Cutbacks: Board to Vote Next Week on Slashing $28 Million
By Bill Bush, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Feb. 16–After a meeting attended by nearly 200 people who came to protest budget cuts planned by Columbus schools, board President Terry Boyd said the district likely will make the changes on Tuesday.
“We made a determination to rightsize the district,” Boyd said at the meeting at the Africentric School last night.
“When you lose the number of students that we’ve lost, it doesn’t make sense to continue the same staffing pattern that we have. So unless the board really turns on its heels, that’s why I suspect that probably we will vote on the cuts next week.”
The board is expected to cut $28 million from the 2006-07 school year to compensate for losses to charter schools and to extend the life of a 2004 operating levy until the end of 2008.
Combined with the cuts associated with the closing of 12 schools at the end of this school year, the new round of cuts could shed more than 400 teaching positions, or almost 9 percent of the teaching force.
The proposed cut of 18 administrators is out of proportion with cuts in teaching staff, said Columbus Education Association President Rhonda Johnson.
“It’s a lot of pain that all of us have to feel, but it’s not equitable,” Johnson said. “With 400 teachers being gone, how many administrators do we need?”
Judy James told the board yesterday to reject a proposal to cut 25 school nurses to save $1.5 million.
Her 8-year-old son must take 10 medications a day and has a cecostomy catheter tube through the side of his belly.
Though the nurses aren’t at her son’s school every day of the week, James said the district needs more nurses, not fewer.
“I wouldn’t be able to go to work without knowing that he’s being taken care of,” James said.
Ashley Braxton, 15, a student at Columbus Alternative High School, asked the board to eliminate a plan to shorten the day for high-school students.
She and about 30 other students play the violin during their study hall. The study halls and free periods for extracurricular activities would be lost if the plan is approved.
“I, for one, won’t be able to participate in playing the violin anymore,” Braxton said.
David Rhodes told the board that if the district is serious about eliminating all bus rides for high-school students — at least two board members suggested it at a meeting Tuesday — he needs to know now.
He lives on the East Side and his 13-year-old daughter is attempting to get into Centennial High School on the Northwest Side through the district’s lottery.
“I have to make choices because they’re having the lottery (for next school year) now,” Rhodes said. “If it (busing) is cut, then they need to do it right now. I would have chosen a different school closer to my area.”
Several people at the meeting urged the board to put another operating levy on the ballot to raise money, but board member Jeff Cabot said after the meeting that’s out of the question.
“I think we promised that this levy would last until 2008,” Cabot said. “I think the chances of passing a levy before then are very, very slim.”
bbush@dispatch.com
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