Parkway approves budget cuts

Despite complaints that the public did not have a voice in the decision, the Parkway Board of Education unanimously approved a budget that will cut between $7.45 million and $9.63 million over the next two years.

Parkway’s chief financial officer, Mark Stockwell, told the board that the budget cuts are needed because the district has been dipping into its savings since 2009 in order to cover increased operating expenses. Meanwhile revenues, especially from interest on investments, have been decreasing due to the downturn in the economy.

One Parkway parent, Mollie Gulino, presented the board with a petition signed by about 190 others asking the board to table the portion of the budget that would reduce the number of specialists who provide extra help. She reminded the board that five years ago voters approved Prop R, a 37-cents tax increase, to provide students with the extra help in math and reading.

“Now you stand before us and tell us that the very programs that have made our children successful are going to be restructured,” Gulino said. “That even though we are still paying taxes to fund math and reading assistance programs, you’re going to allocate that money elsewhere or in a different manner.”

Currently, Parkway has at least one math and one reading specialist for each of its 23 elementary and middle schools, but the new budget will cut the number of reading intervention specialists from 48.5 to 46 and the number of math facilitators from 23 to 18. Those cuts along with others in student and teacher support personnel make up the largest amount of savings at $1.8 million to $2.5 million over the next two years.

Board Director Dee Mogerman said she’s been hearing from residents who are also questioning the cuts in specialists.

“I guess I’m just bothered because people don’t think there’s a plan for this,” Mogerman said. “I think there is a plan and I think we need to say it out loud.”

Board Director Bruce Major said he believed that the days of one specialist per school came from a desire to “make sure we get our share. Something that stood out when we looked hard at ourselves as a district was that equity does not equal equal.”

Board Director Helen Casteel told Superintendent Keith Marty that she has also heard from some parents and teachers who wonder why they did not have more of a voice in the decision.

“Admittedly we did not involve a widespread group of individuals because we really thought it was necessary that we address the 2012-13 budget,” Marty responded. He said the budget decisions should have been made in September and that administrators had considered 100 possible strategies.

“So we tried to deal with those things that we thought were operational and also were things that we could change perhaps because it was time to look at them … things like interventions and some of the support,” Marty said.

According to Marty, the final 2012-2013 budget does incorporate some changes for which residents and administrators had asked. The original budget proposal had cut eleven math facilitator positions but the final budget cuts only five of those jobs.

The original proposal moved registrars out of each school and put them only in the four high schools. Marty said elementary principals told him that registrars at their schools did more than register students so a new secretarial position has been established for those schools.

Except for those two changes the budget remains the same as proposed. Details for the budget can be found on the Parkway website www.pkwy.k12.mo.us.