Hitchcock ISD avoids mass layoffs

HITCHCOCK — School trustees were breathing a sigh of relief Tuesday night, having avoided declaring a financial emergency that could have led to deep budget cuts including teacher layoffs.

A combination of resignations, trimming the school district’s transportation spending, reorganizing staff and across-the-board cuts on supplies and travel budgets eliminated about $1.5 million from the Hitchcock school district budget.

That is enough — for now — to avoid mass layoffs, school board president Dianne James said.

The budget trimming stayed clear of a declaration of financial exigency, which would have allowed the district to implement a reduction-in-force strategy and layoffs of even staff that were under contract.

The district, already hurting for funds because of recent years of declining enrollment, lost about $2 million in state funding because of pending state budget cuts for public education, forcing budget cuts on the local level.

James was relieved that RIFs were avoided. She warned if the state legislature trims more from what it gives public school district’s, any additional cuts would go too deep.

“There’s no more trimming we can do without jeopardizing the education of our students of our district,” James said. “We have already increased the size of our classrooms (number of students per teacher) to 25 to 1; we have cut all the teachers we can cut; we have cut all the at-will (employees) we could cut.

“There’s just no way we could cut any more — because to do so would jeopardize our students’ education.”

Most of the job cuts came through resignations. Of the nine teachers cut from the budget, five took advantage of an incentive package for voluntary resignations.

The others resigned or retired without taking the incentive package, which offered 10 percent of that teacher’s salary as a bonus to go ahead and resign or retire.

Four education aids and two administrators, including the assistant superintendent for curriculum also resigned, Hitchcock budget director Nina Conway said.

Not all of the job eliminations were necessarily voluntary. The district also did not renew a number of employee contracts, which trimmed the staff as well.

School districts routinely do not count nonrenewal of contracts as layoffs even though it does mean a teacher or staff member are out of job involuntarily.

James said a special effort was made to keep teachers within the district even if their jobs had been eliminated. There were several instances in which a teacher was reassigned within the district to fill a vacant post while at the same time their old job was eliminated, resulting in some of the net savings, James said.

In all, the staffing changes eliminated about $800,000 from the budget.

The budget trimming was not focused on job cuts.

What might prove to be the most controversial move was the trimming of $200,000 from the district’s transportation budget. The savings comes mostly from eliminating three bus routes and doing away with a policy of not putting older and younger students on the bus together, Conway said.

“We’re going to pack them in on the bus and hope the older kids will help our staff with the younger ones,” Conway said.

Another $300,000 in savings is expected when the district implements a 10 percent across-the-board cut in supplies and travel budgets for each school campus, Conway said.

That action might come back to cause problems for the district with many parents, Conway said.

The district also was able to save another $200,000 in unspecified budget cuts.

“We have worked very hard to avoid (layoffs),” board vice president Monica Cantrell said of the budget saving moves.

Had the district declared financial exigency, it would have been the second district in the county to do so.

La Marque made an announcement of financial emergency earlier this month, which led to several layoffs.

That district already has eliminated about 50 jobs since then and Superintendent Ecomet Burley warned that a school campus might be forced to close.

Clear Creek school district, the county’s largest, was facing a $50 million budget shortfall. Part of its program to reduce that deficit was to reorganize staff to save about $9.4 million.

Friendswood school district was forced to let some staff go, while the Texas City school district offered incentives for staff to resign or retire.