School board members ask for deeper, more comprehensive budget cuts

School board members expressed dissatisfaction on Tuesday with a set of budget cuts proposed to mitigate an ongoing multimillion dollar shortfall, directing staff to identify an additional $2 million in specific cost savings in staff, programs and services.

At a budget study session Tuesday morning, board members stressed that they will need more than the sketch of $3.6 million in possible cutbacks presented by senior staff to be able to effectively prioritize district spending to plan for a multiyear deficit. Under the district’s most conservative projection, Palo Alto Unified will see a cumulative $8.8 million shortfall over the next four years.

“I’m disappointed that after many months, which the board was told last year were needed to conduct a thoughtful, inclusive, and thorough budget reduction process, the current proposals are all we’ve got,” said trustee Todd Collins, whose campaign for school board centered around the budget shortfall.

“In order for the board to do its job of setting district priorities, we need the staff to give us more budget options,” he said. “We need to know what the options are.”

Staff presented on Tuesday a series of cost-saving proposals, the bulk of them coming from reorganization of the district office and of teacher-leadership positions.

Trustees reiterated that their goal is to make cuts as far away from the classroom as possible, but said they are unable to uphold that goal without seeing more options for savings — even ones that will be undesirable to make.

“I am not looking myself for a list of $2 million in cuts that staff thinks are the right places to cut,” said Vice President Ken Dauber. “I’m actually looking for a list that when we get to a bottom of it, you really don’t want to cut so that we can really test the limits of what is desirable here. I want the board to be enabled, finally, to make the priority decisions and I think we can only do that if you provide us with a list of things you’re uncomfortable with.”

Several board members urged McGee to think “out of the box” in finding savings at every level, from reorganizing its human resources and information technology departments to outsourcing landscaping services to eliminating a practice of buying food and coffee for board members at meetings. Trustee Melissa Baten Caswell made a motion, unanimously supported by her colleagues, to direct the superintendent to return with a plan for how he will identify possible areas for operational savings — ways to make the district operate more efficiently.

Trustees also directed Superintendent Max McGee to include a description of the impact of specific cuts, as some changes could have a less obvious impact on the classroom.

Board member Jennifer DiBrienza, a former teacher, said one of those less-obvious impacts could come from administrative cuts that go too far. She said she was concerned to hear her colleagues “pitting classroom dollars versus administrative dollars when they’re so closely tied together.”

“We have 17 different school sites and without a strong central district we’re 17 islands out there floating around separately,” she said.

President Terry Godfrey suggested the district look at its historic ratio of district-office personnel to students as a possible guiding metric for cuts at 25 Churchill Ave. In 2002, there were about 14 district-office staff for every 1,000 students, she said. That number dropped in 2009, 2010 and 2011. She suggested 13 district positions per 1,000 students as a target number.

McGee urged the board to be “thoughtful” in setting specific targets, warning that “just hitting a number is much easier than it sounds, especially when we look at how our needs have changed.”

Meb Steiner, president of the district’s classified union, told the board that their top priority should be not only students, but “people in general,” and to avoid what she saw as a pitting of the value of administrators against teachers and staff.

“Our buildings, our programs, everything else — it’s hollow shells without people who are dedicated and motivated and excited to be here,” Steiner said.

Two parents from Terman Middle School and Barron Park Elementary School, Nancy Krop and Anne LaWer, also asked the board to avoid a proposal to decrease per-student funding at every school from from $105 to $85, worrying about the disproportionate impact it could have on schools with high-needs populations and fewer resources.

Board members also worried about the pressure the deficit will put on programs the district and community are anticipating adding in the coming year, such as a new social-emotional learning curriculum. Collins said that proposals to dip into the district’s reserves and borrowing by using bond funds to make up for some of the shortfall will effectively leave the board with “almost no ability to fund important initiatives, aside from dipping further into reserves.”

“To not have any room in this budget to add things,” Baten Caswell echoed, “is, I think, shortsighted of us.”

At the direction of a unanimously supported motion made by Dauber, McGee agreed to bring a more detailed list of cuts at both the district- and school-level to the board’s next discussion on the 2017-18 budget.

The board will also consider scheduling an additional meeting to discuss the budget further.