Dr. David Schauer, superintendent of the Kyrene School District, painted a picture of the district’s plans for the future during a Chandler Chamber 2010 State of the Schools Education Forum April 22 at the Hilton in Chandler.
Schauer spoke about the district’s budget and what it was doing to provide a positive learning environment for students.
At the current time, Schauer said, the Kyrene School District is operating with a budget deficit of $6 million for 2010-11 if the May sales tax initiative passes.
He said communication and planning has enabled the district to continue to succeed even with budget constraints.
The Kyrene School District, he said, has gone through measures to find a way to serve students and save money. Although the current state of the economy has put many districts in a difficult situation, the challenge is nothing new for the Kyrene School District, according to Schauer.
“The thing about the Kyrene School District (is that) we’ve been facing budgetary challenges for many years, so while the current crisis makes things worse we’ve been working in this arena for a long time,” he said.
“The scarcity of funding for public education in our state has kept us at the edge for many years. When you’re talking about huge steps and bigger reductions, we already feel like we’ve done so many things to become organized and efficient.”
Schauer said the district’s budget has been tight for seven years. The district knows how to deal with the issue, but any more additions to the budget deficit would force it to make some tough decisions.
“When you’re asked to do even more (with the budget), what we start worrying about is the safety of the kids. We get to the point where we have to start eliminating potential services that we believe are important for the welfare (of the students),” he said.
“But so far our district has been in this arena for a while. We have reserves and we have pre-payments that we can utilize and strategies in place that help us deal with a yearly budget deficit that we’ve had. It’s nothing new to us.”
Many districts, to reduce similar deficits, have cut programs such as art, physical education and music. Schauer said the Kyrene School District is not willing to do this.
“We’re unwilling to go there,” he said. “What we’re looking at is more broad based strategies.”
Professional learning committees have been one of the strategies under development, Schauer said. The committees are made up of Kyrene teachers who meet on a regular basis and look over the students’ collective grades and assessments.
“They work together to determine what (the student) needs,” Schauer said.
“It’s meeting the needs of the students in a much better way than it used to. When I first started teaching, it was basically you’re on your own and you have to figure it out.”
The district is also investing in the students by continuing funding for the Kyrene Family Resource Center.
“We want to make sure our students have the basic needs met when they come to school. The Family Resource Center provides food, clothing, medical attention—whatever a family might need,” he said.
“What we have found is that poverty has grown tremendously in the past year. We built the center and it’s providing more support than ever before for the entire district. Our poverty rate has grown from about nine percent to 25 percent. We have to look at how we’re doing things differently to meet the needs of the students.”
Surviving a budget crunch, Schauer said, is done by communicating and working closely with the community.
“We believe that success on communication and partnership is critical for the work we’re trying to do with all of our students,” he said. “We are always trying to figure out how to best reach out and work as a community.”
Schauer was joined in the annual report, sponsored by the Chandler Chamber of Commerce, by Barbara Border, deputy superintendent of the Arizona Department of Education; Dr. Camille Casteel, superintendent of schools in the Chandler Unified School District; Dr. Keith Hjelmstad, Arizona State University vice president; Dr. Linda Lujan, Chandler-Gilbert Community College interim president; and Debra Thompson, Maricopa Community College vice chancellor,
