From the Press of Atlantic City, March 24, 2010, Rob Spahr, Staff Writer
The Mullica Township School District plans to eliminate 12 staff positions and reduce two others from full-time to part-time.
Superintendent Richard Goldberg said the district notified a handful of employees prior to the state aid figures being released that they could be laid off if the district received flat funding.
The district's aid actually was cut by about $260,000.
"This compounded it," said Goldberg, adding that when combined with increases in special education costs and health insurance coverage, the district faces an estimated $700,000 gap in its budget.
The jobs to be eliminated are "across the board" and include teachers, aides, secretaries, custodians and administrative staff, Goldberg said. And the two positions that will be reduced to part-time will be in the areas of physical education and music instruction, he said.
"This is very painful for us … it is affecting a lot of people," Goldberg said. "And some of these staff members have been here for 10 years."
The district will also be reassigning its computer teachers into regular classroom teaching roles, he said.
But staffing will not be the only thing cut in this year's budget.
"Our funding for field trips, textbooks, school supplies, and computers are all down to a pittance," Goldberg said. "And our principals are down to less than 20 percent of the money that they had two years ago for extracurricular activities."
Goldberg said the district would be cutting the hours for some these activities and reducing the amount of coaching positions for athletics.
"We'll try to hang on to some of the after school activities, but it won't be much," he said. "And one sport will need to go."
Goldberg called the need for cuts "devastating."
"All of the programs that are being impacted the most are all the things that you want to have in providing a first-class education," he said. "This is the most severe reduction I've ever seen."
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Mullica School to Cut a Dozen Jobs
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10 comments:
Looks like the union is not cooperating. They'd rather hurt the kids than be reasonable and share the pain.
Governor Christie just yesterday called upon the NJEA to have a voluntary pay freeze for next year's budget. His reason is the estimated savings will help the school districts tremendously and it should save jobs.
Interesting. What adminstrative postions were cut?
According to the chart, on the article listed below this one, Mullica would be laying off 10% of its staff. Sad.
All these cuts are listed but Goldberg doesn't say that the tax rate won't go up again.
What supplies are they cutting? I thought the teachers were complaining that they had to buy pencils, paper, tissues.etc with their own money in the past years. Wasn't the avg. about $30 a week?
If the school would bill the parents for these supplies, then the teachers could put in the 1.5% contribution for their own health care and and still save a ton of their own money.
Charge the parents $1 a pencil,$3 a notebook,etc and you'll see how fast the kids come in prepared for the day.
Tonight (Thursday 25th March) the news announced that the staff of West Essex School District(WEEA) has decided to take a pay freeze for the upcoming year. Reasons cited by union leaders were for the benefit of the children, district and community. The benefit of such a freeze would also save jobs and keep all programs in place. Will other communities and government state/township workers follow?
In order to keep the same level of taxes as last year, all the cuts would have to be made that were mentioned in the article plus the wages frozen and contributions put into the health care. Even then, we might not make up for the lost state aid and rising costs.
At least,the West Essex district is making an effort to help it's teachers keep their jobs and share the financial burden.
The teachers who will most benefit from the pay raises are those at the top of the pay scale. They are also the ones who will be unaffected by staff cuts. Do you really expect them to forgo a pay raise just to save the jobs of people with far less seniority? If your answer is yes then I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
R: "Do you really expect them to forgo a pay raise"?
As far as I know, the school board and union have not yet agreed on a pay raise for this year. The board needs to stick to its gun that Mullica's taxpayers cannot afford to give raises this year and should not agree to anything more. It's giving raises to the supervisory staff this year was irresponsible and set a bad precedent.
The Mullica Township BOE has the money for the 2009-2010 raise sitting in their accounts - it was part of the budget last year - THAT THE TAXPAYERS PASSED. Why hasn't it been distributed?
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