More concerns over potential teacher and class cuts

WEBUTUCK — The Board of Education and administration at the North East Central School District (commonly known as Webutuck) faced another round of criticism regarding the potential cuts to teachers and programming that have caught the public’s and staff’s ire for two weeks running.On Thursday, March 24, about a dozen staff members met individually with Superintendent Steven Schoonmaker; they were forewarned that some of their classes or their entire positions were being considered for elimination. Nothing is set in stone, the superintendent told staff, but the board is considering its options in how to deal with an increasingly tight fiscal situation.At the Monday, March 28, board meeting, and then again at the meeting on Monday, April 4, the opening public comments session was dominated by criticism from parents, students and staff about specific classes or teachers being considered for elimination.Based on the number of times they were brought up, decisions to possibly phase out the French foreign language program and eliminate both the home education and technology classes were clearly the least popular choices.The logic of eliminating French over German was the option most discussed. The audience pointed out that the French classes were incredibly popular with students and that just this year the German Regents examinations were eliminated.The proposed reductions were recommended to the board by the superintendent as a result of discussion with principals and administrators.Schoonmaker said that of the three foreign languages that Webutuck offers, Spanish seemed to be the obvious choice not to eliminate, as it is “one of the fastest growing languages out there” and many employment fields look favorably upon applicants who are fluent in Spanish.German, he then argued, is outpacing other languages across Europe as the language of choice among the business industry, while the reliance on French is gradually decreasing, according to the superintendent.“Business and research says that’s where things are going for the future,” he said. “That definitely played into our discussions.”Schoonmaker also pointed out that colleges are relying less and less on Regents scores when accepting students, and that outside of the state of New York, “they don’t really care about it at all.”“These are all terrible choices,” he pointed out. “It just comes down to which one to make.”The board was asked about its reserves and whether it could use those monies to offset the financial shortfalls. School board President Dale Culver said that the most current draft of the budget does include using some of the district’s reserves, but using a significant portion of it would a) only be a one-year fix and b) potentially lower the district’s credit rating, which in turn could mean paying higher interest rates and might cost Webutuck more in the long run.Most questions about reductions were answered by Culver as “hopefully a moot point at this point next week.” Culver said that the board has reached out to the collective bargaining units (the teachers’ and staff unions) in the district about the possibility of making concessions to salaries across the board to spare some of the programming being considered for elimination (for more information on the progress of those discussions, turn to Page A1).Culver pointed out that this is the first year in some time that Webutuck has had to make cuts to programming and staff purely because of the financial situation of the district.The most current draft of the 2011-12 Webutuck budget is a 1.36 percent budget-to-budget increase to a total of $20,050,447. The estimated tax levy would increase by .91 percent under that budget.The board has to adopt a budget by its April 19 board meeting. There will be at least one more meeting held before then on April 11.“Frankly, I’m not happy sitting here talking about cutting staff and affecting programs,” Culver pointed out early on in the meeting. “But the fact is that the size of the school doesn’t help with [state aid] funding. The school has a large amount of space and a slimming population. This is the year where a lot of [the cuts are] strictly about money.”