Harsh lessons for schools
Cutbacks, closings could be just the start
denverpost.com
By Monte Whaley, Denver Post Education Writer
Karen Jarldane thought her sons were learning about the world's cultures beyond the walls of Washington Bilingual Elementary School in Boulder.
She did not count on them getting a jolt of the real world economics now slowly strangling Colorado's public schools.
The school, where students learn Spanish and English in close-knit classrooms, will be closed in the fall along with two other buildings - Mapleton Elementary and Base Line Middle School - in hopes of saving $720,000 in a district facing a $2.9 million shortfall.
"The whole school was emotionally involved in keeping the school open. Now it's just heart-wrenching," Jarldane said.
Schools across Colorado are slashing jobs and ditching programs in one of the worst financial climates for classrooms in recent memory.
Few, if any, school districts are being spared. Disasters such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Colorado's drought are part of a ripple effect choking funding for schools from Denver to the Eastern Plains.
Dwindling state and local revenues, rising maintenance and insurance costs, declining enrollments and a mix of voter-approved measures to limit spending are all contributing to the crisis.
Worse yet, officials say this could be only the first phase of a dark financial era if there is no immediate economic turnaround.
"If because of the drought a farmer has no water, he has to sell his cattle," said Colorado Education Commissioner Bill Moloney. "So they don't buy enough from the local feed store; so when the feed store doesn't produce as much sales tax revenue as last year, the local school district has to cut programs."
"It's a small example," added Moloney, "but it shows that when putting together next year's budget, it's a grim picture."
Districts across the state are taking whacks at programs, school buildings and teaching slots to keep budgets afloat. The budget reductions are resulting in:
Closures. Boulder Valley says even more schools could be closed as the district faces an enrollment plunge of 1,800 students in the next five years. Jefferson County Schools, the state's largest district, might also take up the closure issue this summer as one solution to its own enrollment problems.
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Job cuts. Jeffco officials are eyeing a proposal to cut 80 to 100 teaching jobs in an effort to chop $20 million from next year's budget. Denver Public Schools may cut 10 teachers in every comprehensive high school, while librarians, social workers and other employees might also have to go to head off budget problems.
Retirements and reassignments will take care of most of the positions, but in a few cases probationary teachers - the very ones DPS recruited three years ago when there was a teacher shortage - will be let go.
Englewood School District, one of the metro area's smallest, will lose $1 million in state funding because of an enrollment drop of 300 students, "roughly the equivalent to a school full of kids," district chief financial officer Glenn Mohr said recently. The district compensated by cutting 11 positions and faces boosting class sizes from a manageable 20-to-1 student-teacher ratio to 24-to-1 in elementary schools and 25-to-1 in secondary schools.
Sheridan School District had to cut 12 full-time positions this year because of budget woes, while the 270-student Wray School District made painful cuts in instruction and administration because of a $500,000 deficit in a $4.8 million budget, said Superintendent Mark Payler.
"For this community, it was a catastrophe," Payler said.
Boulder Valley also plans to cut 48 mostly central-office and support positions to make up the shortfall. Even the normally prosperous Cherry Creek School District will drop at least two central administration jobs to make up a $3.2 million deficit.
Karen Jarldane, a parent volunteer, works with her son Jesse, 7, in his second-grade class at Washington Bilingual Elementary. Jarldane’s three sons will join 800 other students in the Boulder Valley School District who will walk into new schools in August after the district closes three facilities.
Slashed programs. Littleton Public Schools lost $300,000 for new textbooks, while Denver Public Schools will cut summer school for about 3,000 students. DPS also held back on promised raises for inner-city teachers. The district will also begin charging $185 monthly tuition for early-childhood education classes, which used to be free and considered vital to getting kids off to a good start in school.
Many low-income families won't be able to afford the programs, said Tracey Davis-Wilfall, a parent at Grant Ranch Elementary. "I don't see how the district expects to raise CSAP (state test) scores by making the early-education programs tuition-based," said Davis- Wilfall. "They will have to lower their expectations."
School bus routes will have to be merged in Wray, and some teacher aides may be laid off to save money as well, Payler said. Next year, the cuts could be deeper as financial problems are expected to mount even higher for the state and school districts because of the dragging economy and other factors, school officials say.
"As devastating as the state situation is this year, next year could be far worse," Ken Hoover, the Jefferson County district's chief financial officer, said recently. "If the state goes off the cliff, we go with them."
All the budget fixes haven't yet hurt test scores. Results from last year's annual Colorado Student Assessment Program tests show small gains in reading and writing scores among the state's 750,000 students.
But if the state this June is forced to go back and make rescissions in its budget, that could lead to more layoffs and bigger cuts in classroom budgets, said Jane Urschel, associate executive director for the Colorado Association of School Boards.
Second-graders Nia Brody, left, and Daisy Valenzuela play during recess at Washington Bilingual Elementary. Students at the Boulder school learn Spanish and English in close-knit classrooms.
"That's when we'll see differences in teaching and learning," Urschel said.
Poor accounting and the loose management of finances in some school districts are just adding to the problems, observers say.
"It just creates the feeling that some districts are stealing money or that they are too stupid to handle it," said Michael Griffith, policy analyst with the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.
Some districts are hurting worse than others, particularly the high- scoring Boulder Valley School District.
In Boulder Valley, Jarldane's three sons will join 800 other students districtwide who will walk into new schools in August because of the district's financial bleeding.
"They are apprehensive about the whole thing," Jarldane said last month. "They are wondering if their teachers are going to be with them in their new school. And if there will be any familiar faces."
Boulder High School senior Ronin Davis worries the district is moving too quickly to shutter neighborhood schools and not considering alternatives.
"The fact of the matter is that they didn't give much thought to those schools being better suited for a certain type of student than others," said Davis, 17. "It's kind of scary."
Teachers and administrators in the district, meanwhile, are locked in a bitter contract dispute that has led to teacher association members recently casting a "no confidence" vote against Superintendent George Garcia.
A leading cause of the financial problems is the dragging economy that has left the state struggling with a nearly $1 billion deficit.
Most of the money for public schools in Colorado comes from the state, and when lawmakers drastically cut back on spending, the money well begins to dry up.
But fiscal and enrollment woes aside, public schools in Colorado are under attack in other ways, say lawmakers and officials.
The critics' weapons include private school vouchers, and their plan is to wipe out public schools entirely, some say.
"I think there are people currently in the legislature who would like to see our current system of public schools eliminated and replaced with private schools or religious schools or some combination," said Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder.
Others scoff at the idea. The only thing vouchers, charter schools and other nontraditional approaches to education will do is make public schools stronger, the proponents say.
"We're going to introduce competition into the mix, and if schools are producing, kids will stay in their neighborhood school," said Sen. Ron May, R-Colorado Springs.
Besides, Colorado school districts are not nearly as pinched as those in other states, say officials.
Teachers in Portland, Ore., agreed to work two weeks without pay as part of a last-ditch effort to keep schools open for the full school year.
Teachers in Twin Falls, Idaho, give up a day's pay to pool enough money to keep a hearing specialist on staff. As many as 25,000 teachers in California face layoffs to make up a $30 billion budget shortfall.
Anna Prior, 4, and her father, Chris, a science teacher at Boulder High School, were among demonstrators last month protesting school closings outside a Boulder Valley school board meeting.
Still, Griffith has hope.
"Things are bad now, but not horribly bad," he said.
That's mainly because voters passed Amendment 23 in 2000, which requires the state to increase school funding by the rate of inflation plus 1 percent for the next eight years, Griffith said.
The legislature last week also approved a school finance bill that boosts funding by 2.4 percent and maintains many kindergarten and preschool programs.
But lots of factors could turn a deep hole into a canyon, Griffith admits.
"If there is a major terrorist attack or a major dip into a recession, we'll be looking at real problems," Griffith said.
Only a few years ago - 1999 - Colorado was in the middle of an economic boom that led to a $500 million tax cut and another $330 million in direct refunds. Excess revenue was topping original estimates - a cumulative $6 billion over six years.
That was before a national economic slowdown and the Sept. 11 attacks. Both helped close the funding spigot for states and their schools, say experts.
Squeezed by tax limits
But other causes are leaving Colorado school districts starved for funds, according to school and state officials, school groups, parents and other observers.
Often cited are tax cuts, the Gallagher Amendment, TABOR and the Senior Homestead Exemption.
Backers say all those measures help taxpayers, homeowners and businesses hang on to what they've earned during the year while keeping government spending in check.
But some lawmakers and school officials say they create a funding dilemma in hard times.
"The decisions at the state level made over time are coming home to roost," said Julie Phillips, a Boulder Valley school board member.
State lawmakers agreed to permanent state income- and sales- tax cuts in 1999 of about half a billion dollars, along with billions annually in corporate and individual tax credits.
Meanwhile, voters in 1982 passed the Gallagher Amendment, which keeps residential property taxes at a fixed ratio to other property taxes; the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, or TABOR, in 1992, which limits both revenue and spending at all levels of government; and the Senior Homestead Exemption in 2000, which gives property-tax relief to senior citizens and requires the state to reimburse local governments for revenue lost as a result of seniors paying less, according to the Colorado Education Association.
If those spending and financing constraints stay intact, Colorado schools will get squeezed even tighter, say officials.
"In a lot of ways, the health of our schools is at the whim of what goes on in the economy and certainly at the state level," said Teresa Steele, another Boulder Valley school board member.
Help in this area could be on the way. State Treasurer Mike Coffman said he plans to host a summit this summer to study how the measures hurt schools and the state during economic slowdowns.
State funds are tied to each student enrolled in a school district. The more students, the more money.
But many Colorado districts are either losing students, or enrollment is flat. Consequently, the flow of state dollars that districts use for maintaining facilities and to meet rising insurance and energy costs stays the same or declines.
Plunges in enrollment helped lead to deep holes in the Boulder Valley budget and could also force the Jefferson County School District to consider closing schools.
"It truly is a sad fact," said Jefferson County spokesman Rick Kaufman, "but as students decline, fixed costs remain the same."
Closing buildings, Kaufman said, "is truly the last resort because of the turmoil it creates in communities."
Only about 35 of Colorado's 178 school districts are experiencing any kind of enrollment growth. The rest are left to figure out what to do with shrinking wallets, said Peg Portscheller, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives.
"I think people are reluctant to admit it, but we are in a new day," said Portscheller. Her group is advising school districts to try to hold back on salary increases or on unplanned spending because of enrollment decreases.
"We're advising everyone to be careful," Portscheller said. "Any budget decisions you make today will have implications for the future."
Accounting off the mark
Murky bookkeeping and alleged misconduct helped lead to massive budget problems in the St. Vrain Valley and Elizabeth school districts. Both districts agreed to bailout plans created by state Treasurer Coffman.
The St. Vrain District in Longmont was hurt the most by staff and budget cuts, along with pay rollbacks aimed at making up a $13.8 million deficit.
Coffman, who blamed lax oversight by school board members for many of the woes, pushed for and got legislation this year to reform school districts' budgeting process. He is also urging more cooperation with the Colorado Department of Education to better manage district finances.
Coffman said troubled districts should stop agreeing to multiyear contracts with employees that guarantee raises. Districts also must make cutbacks that will likely be unpopular if they hope to remain solvent.
"It's all a function of leadership," Coffman said. "Some difficult decisions have to be made. If tough decisions are not made, some districts will be headed for a financial meltdown."
Many Colorado districts are well-managed, but they still face a credibility gap with voters because of the missteps by St. Vrain and Elizabeth officials, said Griffith of the Education Commission of the States.
"The echo effect will cause problems for other districts," Griffith said.
Public schools on trial
Gretchen Lang, a parent in the Boulder Valley district, is convinced that plenty of powerful people in federal, state and local government are against public schools and want to see them erased from the landscape.
Public school opponents use budget cutbacks, vouchers, open enrollment and charter schools to chip away at funding and support for public schools, she said.
Fighting over school closings just plays into the hands of those who want schools to become a purely free-market offering, Lang said.
"School closures play into a much scarier picture of the loss of public schools," Lang said.
Lang and a group of parents who fought the Boulder Valley school closings say public school officials need to revamp their thinking and respond better to the needs of students.
"The bigger picture is very disturbing, unless changes are made soon," Lang said.
Others agree public schools are facing the biggest test in decades. But, said Tony Lewis, executive director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation, a private family foundation that studies and supports public schools, there is little concrete evidence of a concerted effort to abolish them.
"I have yet to meet anyone in Colorado who says we shouldn't have strong and robust public schools," Lewis said.
"Do we need to reform schools in terms of finances? Do we need reform in terms of quality? Yes," said Lewis. "But I haven't heard anyone say get rid of them |
