Facing a $13.1 million budget shortfall next school year due in part to cuts in state funding for K-12 education, Superintendent Art Jarvis and Chief Operations Officer Sam Bell tonight presented the School Board with a proposal to consolidate three elementary schools with low enrollment into surrounding schools and make a series of other program changes to save $1.5 million.
Students at Wainwright, McKinley and Franklin elementary schools would shift to surrounding schools for the 2011-2012 school year, according to the proposal.
In addition, the proposal included:
· Shifting the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Montessori program currently at Bryant Elementary School to the much newer Franklin Elementary School site.
· Shifting the special education and ChildFind programs from the old Park Avenue School property to the McKinley Elementary site, which would preserve a school district presence in the McKinley neighborhood. The district would vacate and close the Park Avenue site.
· Shifting the several programs – Head Start, Family Literacy, Indian Education, Tone Transitional Center and Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program – from the old Madison School site to the Bryant Elementary site, which would preserve a school district presence in the northern portion of the Hilltop neighborhood. The district would vacate and close the Madison building.
· Transferring Geiger Elementary School temporarily to the vacant Hunt Middle School site while the district builds a new Geiger Elementary School. (One option for future discussion would be postponing the construction of the new Geiger Elementary and consider instead building a preschool-through-eighth-grade Montessori school on the vacant Hunt Middle School site, which sits less than a mile from Geiger.)
· Considering melding the former middle school known as Hunt on the West Side into an expanded Foss High School with a rigorous academic program that serves grades six through 12.
The consolidation of the three elementary schools also generates some significant or some minor changes to the attendance areas of surrounding schools – Blix, Roosevelt, Lyon, Stanley, DeLong, Geiger, Grant, Reed – that would accommodate some new students, according to the proposal.
The district has posted a map of each school’s proposed new attendance area on its Web site: tacomaschools.org. Click on the big blue banner marked “District Budget Outlook.” Additional resources on that page include a newly posted PowerPoint presentation on the school consolidations shown during the Feb. 24 School Board meeting. Citizens who want to send messages to the superintendent and school board members can fill in an e-mail form on that same special Web site.
Board members indicated they want to hear from the communities around the affected schools about the proposals. The district will organize a series of public meetings over the next two weeks in areas of Tacoma most affected by the school consolidations so stakeholders can hear more details about the plan and ask questions. The school board, by district policy, also must host two public hearings for any school closure.
The selection of McKinley, Wainwright and Franklin from a list of six low-enrollment schools involved several factors – the low enrollment, the age of McKinley and Wainwright, and the space availability in surrounding schools to most easily accommodate larger enrollments.
Moving forward more work still needs to be done to identify new locations for special education programs at the three schools and the SAIL highly capable program currently at Wainwright.
The overarching goal is to devise an innovative approach that makes the least overall impact on students and the district as a whole, retains programs for students and still helps reduce the large budget shortfall for 2011-2012.
Based on current elementary enrollment, Tacoma has capacity for approximately 3,000 more elementary school students. If the school board follows through with the proposed consolidations and changes, the district still would have capacity for approximately 1,800 additional students.
Superintendent Jarvis has proposed a three-year plan to deal with the projected prolonged economic crisis and cuts in state funding. For next school year, the proposed budget plan includes:
· Saving $1 million in administrative and operational efficiencies
· Increasing class size by one in elementary schools to save an estimated $2 million.
· Consolidating the elementary schools to save $1.5 million
· Eliminating 50 to 60 positions throughout the district to save an estimated $8.1 million
· Spending down the district’s savings account by $10 million to prevent even deeper budget cuts
The proposal to increase class size would involve the district negotiating the implementation of the increase in class size limits and teacher-to-student ratios with the Tacoma Education Association – the union representing teachers and other educators.
Laurie Taylor, assistant superintendent for human resources, informed the board that TEA leadership has indicated a willingness to discuss the class size issue as part of negotiating the next labor contract. The current labor contract expires at the end of the current year.