GRPS proposes cuts to cover $15M gap

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Administrators with Grand Rapids Public Schools have proposed cutting more than 70 teaching positions, cutting 13.5 administrative and clerical positions, a 10 percent across-the-board nonsalary budget cut and using millions in savings as part of the solution to fill an estimated $15 million budget hole for 2009-10.

The school board would have to approve the budget proposal presented Monday night before it is implemented.

Teaching positions would be reduced through not replacing retirees, moving some teachers from full- to part-time voluntarily and involuntarily and layoffs. Administrators said they still are determining the exact breakdown.

On the nonteaching side, the plan cuts three administrative positions and three clerical positions at the central office and cuts five building administrators and 2 1/2 full-time building clerical positions. It also trims elementary library paraprofessional positions, replacing them with literacy paraprofessionals.

Alternative education and local special education would be restructured under the plan. It reduces funding for site-based staffing and language centers. Administrative buildings would close Fridays during the summer and over the break between Christmas and New Year's Day.

The district would use $6.8 million in savings to cover the remainder of the gap administrators said is caused largely by rising expenses, such as health care for employees, and an expected loss of 550 students.

That use of the district's fund balance, leaving a projected $125,000 at the end of next school year, could lead to the need to borrow money to cover ongoing expenses during 2009-10, GRPS chief financial officer Lisa Freiburger told board members.

In an interview with 24 Hour News 8, Freiburger said that for the current school year, the district has more in the fund than she had projected last year. She has argued in the past that it is best to be conservative with such projections because of the consequences of doing the opposite.

Teachers union president Paul Helder criticized Freiburger's projections on fund balance and the overall budget. He said he knows the economy is tough on people and businesses but he wondered how the district's financial condition could be so poor given the federal stimulus plan.

"Those people, those businesses would kill to be in the situation we're in," Helder told the board. His members are finishing up their second school year without a contract.

Freiburger noted that federal stimulus dollars for budget stabilization will flow through the state. They are expected to be used to avoid cutting the promised per-student state funding, rather than provide an extra infusion of cash. Some stimulus money does flow directly from the federal government to the districts, namely, $18 million in special education and Title I money for "disadvantaged students." But that money, Freiburger said, can be used only for those specific purposes and could not fix the overall budget gap.

The board could vote on administrators' budget plan as early as June 1.

Freiburger warned the board to prepare for a tougher 2010-11. Federal stimulus money initially was expected to be available to cover budget shortfalls that year, but because of funding problems at the state level for this current year, those federal dollars might dry up by 2010-11. Freiburger said the board might need to consider mid-year staffing adjustments, building closures, building sales and any expense reductions that could be implemented for that school year.

Helder has been publicly critical of the board's special meeting vote last week to extend Superintendent Bernard Taylor's contract by another three school years. Taylor will not receive a salary increase, board president Catherine Mueller said. At Monday night's board meeting, resident Pete Walsh said the board was being secretive.

"Would anybody in the public like to have come here and addressed you on that? Do you think? After all the controversy that went on?" Walsh asked the board before loud applause from some in the audience.

Mueller said the timing was about board members' schedules. They would not have allowed a vote before the May school elections and there would not have been time for the evaluation that occurs before the vote at Monday's meeting.

"We've done this in the past," she said in an interview. "This is not an unusual process."