The New Normal

dr asplund
your first year on the job and you are already forced to have to make budget cuts. Not fun! After reading your blog entry I would ask you to engage the parents in the district, the students, your faculty and administrators for help finding creative ways to cut costs. I think that by looking at cost cutting from several perspectives you might be surprised what you will find that will not inlcude cutting staff and increasing class size. Just some food for thought. Good luck.

Is the K-3: 20 students per class or per teacher? Based on the current half day Kindergarten class size of 25, I would like this clarified. Thank you.

To answer your question Lora, I believe we have kept the student to teacher ratio lower than 1:20. As you most certainly know, we hired an additional certified teacher to act in an assistive capacity for this year's 1/2 day kindergarten class. You do have a good point, though, in that I characterized it only as a "class size" issue, and I should have been more specific and characterized it as a "student to teacher ratio" issue, as well.

What is current 1/2 day Kindergarten class size? Does it fall within your parameters?

Rene, the current 1/2 day Kindergarten class has 26 students with two certified professionals. We feel that it does fall within our parameters, as we have two teachers (both ladies are certified teachers) for 26 students, or a ratio of 1:13.

To the person who sent me an anonymous post regarding my failure to act responsibly as Superintendent in the face of the economic crisis: I would have posted your comments, but they included some inflammatory statements about other employees of LB 65. I will not post such comments, especially when you, the poster, did not leave your name. I am, in general, not a fan of anonymous posts, but I will post them when those posts do not insult or defame others. Perhaps I walk a fine line on that point, but I believe if you feel strongly enough about a situation, you should contact me or some other members of the administration if you would like more information.

You (whoever you are) did raise a question that needs answered: our budget is posted on our district website. It is located within the business office link. In addition, all of our bills are posted online. We are attempting to remain as transparent as possible, and we would welcome any constructive comments that may help us in this endeavor.

Also, to the anonymous poster, and anyone else who wondered why the district didn't contact you regarding the cuts. We are putting together some information that we intend to disseminate via our email contact list. We are doing the best we can to keep people informed. If you would like more information, I encourage you to contact me and I will set up a time for us to meet so I can answer your questions more completely. Also, we did discuss this issue at last month's board meeting. I encourage you to either attend our regularly scheduled board meetings or watch them on TV.

I have not seen the budget, but I would hope that the overhead has been reduced (administrative) first and production (educational personnel) reduced last.. What is the ratio of administrative personnel to educational population served? How does that compare to the New Norm?

Clay, our student to administrator ratio is approximately 165:1. When comparing us to similar districts in Illinois (using the factors of our area of the state, our expenditure per pupil and our district type and size), we match up very well with all of those districts. The largest ratio that I saw was 270:1 and the smallest was 114:1.

What is the future of the laptop one-to one program & technology in the district? The support staff members involved in its functioning?
How will efficiency be maintained now that at least one Library/Technology assistant position has been eliminated?

Maddie, the laptop one-to-one program will continue in the short term and may very well continue in the long term; however, we need to revisit the program and its effectiveness through implementing some metrics for assessing its success. To begin, the newly-formed district wellness committee will examine the physical effects of carrying a laptop back and forth from home to school. In addition, we, as a district need to study the impact on individual student success in the areas of organization, problem solving skills and simple productivity. These don't have to be the only metrics used, but the data from assessing these items above will go a long way toward determining the continued viability of the program in the future. Of course, we also must continue to consider the costs associated with this program. Each student laptop carries with it a cost of approximately $1250 after all applicable software is installed.

It was stated during the 02-23-10 board meeting that approximately $120,000 non-human capital has been eliminated for the 2010/2011 school year, before any assistants and teachers were let go. What is the detailed breakdown of these costs that have been cut out or still will be? Where can one find a detailed list of these (a graph does not show what was cut line by line)?
Were before and after school LMC and lunch/playground duty stipends considered? What about the operational costs of building access during non-school hours? The costs involved in heating and lighting East School, now that some district staff have moved into parts of the school? Are there other costs involved other than pay for substitutes that could be cut? The district has employed a sub caller for years, what about a district staff member absorbing this duty or an automated program for this? How much for workshops, travel, meals, lodging and the costs of bringing speakers in for workshops were cut? Overtime and/or bonuses? These are suggestions and they maybe have been considered and acted on, maybe not. I do hope that all expenditures and administration costs that could be cut out entirely or greatly reduced have been acted on before any staff member that is “down in the trenches daily” were let go. I do hope that if any future RIFS will occur, and it seems they will again next year, that these operational and administration costs are looked at again and a hard line is taken there before going to assistants and teachers. We are losing some wonderful, dedicated and talented people. This may or may not comfort them, but I hope they all realize that they are truly a great loss for Lake Bluff.

Val, I apologize that my reply will be somewhat incomplete, as I am away from my desk at work and I will need to update this information next week, but, off the cuff, I can tell you that we have looked at most, if not all of these issues. There is a facility committee that is currently researching the most cost-effective way to house central office administration with the knowledge that if we raze East School, we will also need to accommodate our records storage needs, as well. It should also be noted that money spent on facilities does not directly impact the funds used to pay teachers (we must keep separate funds for separate functions and those funds can't be commingled). I don't believe we will need to issue any reduction notices to our teaching staff next year. We believe any necessary reductions can be made via attrition when staff retire (and only when the drop in enrollment will necessitate the choice to not fill a position due to retirement). We have very little need to pay people overtime, and those instances are almost always the result of a building plant emergency (ruptured pipe, boiler trouble, etc.). The stipends paid to supervise before and after school are controlled by our collective bargaining agreement, and, to my knowledge, we aren't paying any bonuses of any kind this year.
As for administration cuts, once again, we are making those and they will be outlined at our March Board of Education meeting. I can't go into much detail at this time, but I can say that in dollar amounts, the largest cut will come from the administration.