Program & staffing changes in my $100 budget exercise

$1.74 – Move all employees in Curriculum Research and Staff Development into classroom teaching and school administrative positions that will be vacated through normal attrition.
$0.40 – Replace Reading Recovery with Read 180
$0.15 – Move Associated Alternatives to Doyle. (Plenty of room with Curriculum Research & Staff Development leaving. Use UW facilities for gym. Use various large conference rooms for lunch.)
$?.?? – Move MSCR to Doyle. Mothball Hoyt subject to further review of best use or sale.
$0.043 – Eliminate one administrative position in superintendent’s office.
$0.043 – Eliminate Legislative Liaison position; rely on lobbyists of Wisconsin School Board Association.
$0.043 – Eliminate Director, Public Information.
$0.243 – Eliminate 9 positions in Gateways to Learning
$0.043 – Eliminate 1 position in research
$0.043 – Eliminate 1 position in Human Resources
Total reduction $2.791 or $7,256,600, without eliminating a single classroom teacher.

3 thoughts on “Program & staffing changes in my $100 budget exercise”

  1. Ed: Good work. However, I have some corrections to your calculations – and a question.
    Corrections:
    1) Your first item – Move all employees of Curriculum Research and Staff Development (actually Teaching & Learning) into the classroom – includes Gateway teachers. So you can’t count the $0.243 for eliminating Gateway teachers later on.
    2) I am not sure where you got the $0.15 for moving the Affiliated Alternatives to Doyle – the cost of their current rent is the equivalent of $0.05 – and then you have to include the cost of remodeling Doyle to bring it up to code for having students there; furthermore, eliminating Teaching and Learning will not provide all the space needed so there is the additional cost of moving and remodeling the place where other staff is moved. My estimate is that the cost of the remodelings, etc. is close to $0.20.
    So my revisions bring down your TOTAL REDUCTIONS to $2.248 or $5,844,800. (You still need to find about $1.602 in cuts – or about $4 million)
    MY QUESTION:
    There has been a lot of concern expressed on the blog site about the need for change in the district. How do you make change if you eliminate the people who are the ones responsible for bringing new ideas to teachers?

  2. Carol,
    Thanks for your feedback. I hope that a dialog on the blog can produce some viable ideas for improving academic performance while saving money.
    I don’t know that anyone knows what remodeling at what cost might be needed in the Doyle building if the MSCR and Affiliated Alternatives were moved into the building. Any remodeling would be a one-time cost that could be recouped from future savings or taken from the maintenance referendum, which has always been used to fund projects not specified in the initial referendum. Or, the money could be borrowed.
    Do you know how much might be saved by moving MSCR out of Hoyt? I haven’t seen any figures.
    I believe Bill Keys was told by an off-camera voice at a recent meeting that moving Affiliated Alternatives would save $400,000 or $.15. That’s where I got the number.
    In answer to your one question, teachers must accumulate continuing education credits to maintain their teaching licenses. That’s where they get new ideas. The MMSD does not need to duplicate what state law already requires of teachers.
    Here’s a not-rhetorical question for you. Would you rather cut classroom teaching positions or the positions in Curriculum Research and Staff Development?
    The $100 budget does not accurately reflect savings generated by cutting FTEs, because fewer FTEs mean fewer supplies, fewer substitute teachers, less utilities, fewer computers, and other variable costs. The $100 budget exercise doesn’t not reflect those savings, so my first crack at the budget actually saves more than $7,256,600. I just don’t know how much more.
    I’ll suggest additional moves to replace the nine Gateways positions that would be shifted to classrooms.
    Will you be posting your $100 budget exercise on the blog?

  3. Carol,
    The categories and FTEs in the $100 budget exercise do not match with the divisions and categories in the MMSD Staff Directory, so it’s not possible to tell which Teaching and Learning positions are included in the $100-budget category called Curriculum Research & Staff Development. Could you please ask district staff to list the Teaching and Learning positions included in Curriculum Research & Staff Development, and post them here or send them to me by e-mail?
    Could you also ask staff to estimate, if they haven’t already, the savings from closing Hoyt?
    In the meantime, I’d suggest that the $100 budget exercise should direct the superintendent to identify 24.3 cents worth of positions from the following categories in the Staff Directory: Budget Services, Finance & Accounting Services, Human Resources, and positions in the district’s Pflaum Road facility.

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