District Administration - June 2011 - (Page 32)

District-level Downsizing while the remaining staff made additional modifications. The in-house staff also will focus on more-effective implementation, professional development of staff and support for schools. Bedden cautions that his district can only go so far in making administrative cuts without having a negative impact on classroom support systems and supervision. “We are taking it more on the administrative side, but we have to strike a balance between administrative and teaching reductions because we still have to have the capacity to evaluate and supervise,” Bedden insists. That’s also a major concern for Wichita’s superintendent, John Allison, who is facing a $30 million budget deficit next year after enduring a $20 million deficit this year. After cutting 19 administrative positions for the current year—including an elementary school assistant superintendent, learning support staff, assessment support staff and administrators in special education and technical education—Allison is making another round of cuts for 2011-2012, among them at least one more assistant superintendent, curriculum coordinators and learning coaches. While Allison’s cost-cutting approaches also have ranged from closing an alternative high school to eliminating the district’s driver education program, some of the largest reductions have come at the expense of administrators. Losing these administrators has cost the district, Allison explains. “We can’t sustain the type of transformation we need to make as a district unless we have the right people in place,” he says. “Now a single assistant superintendent has to evaluate all 62 of our elementary schools instead of 31. It takes time to do those evaluations right.” Consolidation in Illinois Administrators are unusually vulnerable this year in Illinois, where some of the 868 districts consist of a single school and where many localities divide high schools and K8 schools into separate districts. A sweeping, 32 June 2011 state-mandated consolidation plan by Gov. Pat Quinn would reduce the number of districts to 300, with a $100 million annual savings in administrator salaries. While the consolidation proposal has stirred stiff opposition, it has also left superintendents like Lea Prentiss doing the math for a potential merger with the four K8 districts that feed the two high schools comprising his district, Community High School District 128, which covers the towns of Libertyville and Vernon Hills. A notice on the District 128 site states in part that the district “and our feeder districts (Oak Grove School District 68, Libertyville School District 70, Rondout School District 72 and Hawthorne School District 73) could be eliminated without local voter approval.” Prentiss’s staff presently includes one scale consolidation would undermine the local control and community involvement that have defined the state’s school districts. “There would be a lot of logistical and legal questions to answer,” Prentiss says. For instance, he explains, since elementary districts are on a different salary scale, about $12,000 less annually per teacher than high school faculty salaries, those salaries would have to be adjusted upward in a newly consolidated district, and the overall cost would exceed any savings on administrative reductions. Prentiss suggests that the state’s consolidation is more political than pedagogical. “I think there’s an alignment of the economy and the political climate, and it’s provided some pretty frightening scenarios,” he says. “We’re about 15 minutes from the Wisconsin border. And watching what’s going “I think there’s an alignment of the economy and the political climate, and it’s provided some pretty frightening scenarios.” —Lea Prentiss, superintendent, Community High School District 128, Vernon Hills, Ill. associate superintendent, who serves as the district’s chief operating officer, and two assistant superintendents for finance and curriculum, respectively. A consolidation of District 128 with the four surrounding K8 districts would eliminate four superintendents, but that’s just the start of the cuts, he argues. “If we follow the governor’s train of thought, we would have no duplication of services whatsoever. Three of the four elementary districts have full-time business administrators, and all four have curriculum people. To get to the economy of scale he’s talking about, [consolidating all five districts] would take us from 15 to three or four administrators.” Those remaining positions, Prentiss figures, would be limited to a single district administrator for secondary, elementary and finances. Prentiss and other Illinois superintendents have been making the case on their district Web sites that large- on in Wisconsin, anything’s possible,” he adds, referring to the successful efforts of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the state legislature in cutting the salaries of public employees and rescinding their collective bargaining rights. Wichita’s Allison agrees that politics in his state has made his job tougher over the past two years. “The hard part is that we’re in a political climate where education is not valued, which is a change for Kansas, so we’ve become a favorite target for cuts,” Allison concludes. “Everybody likes to talk about administration and the expense involved. I could shut down the entire district administration and only cover 2 percent of the budget. A business couldn’t operate like that, and neither can we. And our customers—students and their families—are increasing.” DA Ron Schachter is a contributing writer for District Administration. District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - June 2011

District Administration - June 2011
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Curriculum News
Sustainability News
Administrator Profile
District Profile
District-Level Downsizing
Lessons Learned from One-to-One
Partner for One-to-One Success
Pioneering States
The Changing Role of the CTO
New Directions for Special Ed
Problem/Solution
Books
Products
Student Counsel
Going Mobile
Professional Opinion

District Administration - June 2011