As Kyrene School District administrators work into the summer, the process of implementing a number of changes in response to the Governing Board’s June 14 adoption of a 2011-12 budget already has begun.
Along with the changes they have now approved, board members also will be moving forward with program studies that they hope will allow the process of developing the budget next year to be less problematic.
“In the past, we didn’t have a significant reduction like we did this year,” Superintendent Dr. David Schauer said.
“It’s harder to manage when you have multi-millions of dollars worth of reductions, as opposed to when we had a slightly declining enrollment, which would usually be under $1 million that we would have to deal with.”
Changes for the coming school year will include reduced time allocated to such so-called “special area” programs as music, library and physical education, along with staffing reductions. Art will be the exception, with an extra five minutes added per week.
“Representative teams will take a look at existing curriculum and determine what needs to be adjusted,” Schauer said.
“The amount of time available (for special-area programs) is less, so obviously there are going to have to be some changes.”
In earlier board meetings, teachers and parents voiced concern over reducing physical education to 45 minutes per week, particularly because this would require elementary-grade students to be outside longer than in past years.
“I know that having indoor space available for the PE program was a big issue for people,” Schauer said.
“We’ve been talking about tightening up the scheduling in the elementary schools so that the lunch hours are as tightly consecutive as possible, allowing the multi-purpose rooms to be available for the maximum amount of time.”
Schauer said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Gina Taylor is also working with schools to establish an alternative space for physical education classes.
Class sizes will also slightly increase, with the exception of third, fourth and fifth-grade students.
“Obviously, with the class sizes, we just have to look at our staffing very closely,” Schauer said.
“As we look at the grade levels at each specific school, which get monitored weekly, we figure out different strategies. For example, we’ll close a grade level at a school to open enrollment if we are right on the cusp of allocating another staff member, until we really know we have enough kids to allocate that other teacher.”
District board members are already discussing whether Kyrene will offer free full-day kindergarten for 2012-13. The board voted to fund the program for the 2011-12 school year, which costs the district approximately $2.5 million.
“I think starting earlier in our planning process is going to make a difference next year,” Schauer said.
“It’s a combination of beginning to talk about these issues early on and engaging more people, and then acknowledging that it’s just a difficult time and it won’t be popular.”
As the Governing Board moves forward with its discussions, Schauer said the district needs to develop strategies for engaging other community members.
“I would like to hear from people we don’t normally hear from and implement more affective technological surveys for parents,” Schauer said.
“During board meetings with the pubic this year, there was an element that surprised me; I thought we were doing a really good job of communicating, and obviously it wasn’t as good as it should have been.”
Schauer will also hold a retreat in August with board members to further discuss study projects and a timeline of changes that need to be implemented in advance of the 2012-13 school year.
“We’re predicting that the challenge is going to remain pretty great (next year),” Schauer said.
“Depending on what happens with the state, it could be just as bad as it was this year.”
