Superintendent's Recommended 2012-13 Budget Request

Reductions and Redirections

The following highlights the central administration adjustments made because of additional cuts in State funding anticipated for public schools in 2012-13. These adjustments total approximately $2.6 million. 

Board of Education
Administration has not recommended reductions for the Board of Education, which voluntarily refused an automatic pay increase in 2008.

Superintendent’s Office
Expenses are being reduced by $8,191 in the Superintendent’s Office. Reductions include mileage reimbursement for staff, contracted services, and office supplies. For the third year in a row, the superintendent has declined the automatic salary increase mandated in his employment contract – a savings to the district of $22,500. The superintendent has also declined to participate in the 1 percent pay increase he is recommending for employees.

Chief of Staff
The Chief of Staff has reduced expenses by $52,936. Reductions include contracted services, printing, supplies and materials, staff development, membership dues and special event costs.

Grants from Businesses for Excellence in Education and other private donors are supporting several strategic plan initiatives, including Guilford Parent Academy, Cool to Be Smart, Celebration of Excellence, State of Our Schools, and annual parent and community public opinion polls.

A grant of approximately $50,000 from Time Warner Cable supports GCSTV-2 operations. District Relations has also secured private donations to support various events and initiatives, including one-time grants to schools for special projects and field trips.

Academic Services
The division of Academic Services includes all areas that impact teaching and learning in our schools under one umbrella. The core business of Academic Services is to support high-quality learning opportunities that focus on students’ academic, safety, and extra-curricular needs.

Academic Services includes but is not limited to the following departments:  Curriculum and Instruction, Pre-Kindergarten, Exceptional Children’s Services, Career Technical Education, Title I, English as a Second Language, Magnet and Choice Schools, After-School Care Enrichment Services, Dropout Prevention, School Social Work, Counseling Services, Character Development, Student Assignment, Professional Development and School Safety. 

Also included in this division are the five regional offices that serve as “one-stop shops” for employees, parents and community members to get information about GCS, including academics, discipline, transportation, facilities, finance, personnel, and  health and safety.  Regional offices also supervise and provide direct assistance to our 122 schools.

Academic Services had a total 2011-12 budget of approximately $51.3 million, including staffing, as well as instructional and student support. Given the continued decline in projected revenue, this division projects a decrease in spending of approximately $1.2 million for fiscal year 2012-13. 

Proposed reductions include, but are not limited to the following:

• A reduction of local funding used to supplement drivers education – a savings of $266,000.
• Reduction in staff in Exceptional Children’s Services by eliminating 1.0 program administrator, 1.0 behavior support teacher, 1.0 adapted physical education teacher, and 1.0 teacher assistant – a savings of $233,637.
• Reduction in tutoring funds allocated to each region – a savings of $38,040.
• Reduction in dual enrollment tuition due to implementation of Career and College Promise – a savings of $190,000.
• Reduction in summer school supplies and materials – a savings of $50,000.
• Continued funding reductions in staff development, contracted services, and instructional supplies and materials in multiple departments and programs – an additional savings of approximately $400,000.

Beginning in 2012-13, the national Common Core Standards, an initiative that is bringing about the biggest change in American classrooms in at least a generation, will be implemented.  This initiative will impact every student and teacher requiring intensive professional development and sessions about new instructional materials and resources. This initiative alone makes it difficult to sustain costs in Academic Services. However, we will continue to provide quality service to our students, schools and community despite budget reductions. Our focus will remain on improving student achievement through effective core instruction, intense intervention and support to our lower achieving schools, leadership and coaching to improve instructional and extra-curricular activities, and continuous monitoring of results. 

Academic Services will continue to support the district’s strategic plan through implementation and evaluation of balanced literacy, effective instruction, character development, innovative schools and programs, acceleration and enrichment opportunities for students in academics, career and technical education, and the arts.

Accountability and Research
Accountability and Research has identified $47,571 in costs that will be paid for by Race to the Top funds during the 2012-13 school year.

Human Resources
Given the decline in revenue available to the district, Human Resources is reducing its expenditures for 2012-2013 by $80,786. This will be accomplished by reducing or eliminating funding in our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), supplies, professional development, recruiting, Teacher of the Year and contracted services areas.

The projected reductions will impact our level of services; however, Human Resources plans to offset these cuts through the utilization of grant funds and having employees assume additional responsibilities.

Technology Services
Given the decline in projected revenue from both state and local governments, and to redirected resources to support the district’s strategic plan, the Technology Services division has reduced its budget by $209,440. Reductions were taken from the areas related to staff, instructional supplies and computer supplies.

The largest amount of the budget reduction for this year is due to the completion of a five-year upgrade by Technology Services. Follett’s Destiny® Library Manager™ library software is a centralized K-12 resource management tool that seamlessly integrates circulation, cataloging, searching, reporting and library management functions on a single platform. It allows all students, parents and staff to access the libraries holdings online and can reserve books. Additionally, Follett eBooks purchased by the school can now be accessed online.

Technology Services has migrated all GCS libraries from an old stand-alone version of Follett to Destiny over the past five years.  Each school’s upgrade cost approximately $8,000. This district upgrade project is now complete. While the Technology Services department would have preferred to redirect those funds to mitigate other needs, the current economic needed dictated otherwise. The yearly maintenance fee is paid by Media Services.

During fiscal year 2012-13, the division will continue its focus by supporting the district’s strategic plan including extending the deployment of online tools to support parents, students and staff, the infusion of instructional technology in the classroom based on the development of local 21st century-based technology standards, the technology portion of the bond projects, increasing Voice-over-IP phone systems, and the support of the Montlieu one-to-one initiative. The Technology Services division will also, over the next four years, devote a significant amount of effort implementing the components of Race to the Top. This effort encompasses the expansion of building-wide wireless to all elementary schools, increasing  this capability in middle and high schools, and enhancing the GCS infrastructure to the networks operations center to support future cloud deployment by the Department of Public Instruction. 

The budget decrease during 2009-10 and 2010-11 forced the district to delay replacement of computers in several schools. This funding has not been reinstated and thus continues to prolong the impact on computer replacement cycles. Schools that are included in the budget for replacement have computers that are more than six years old. This does have an impact as older machines need more service, which takes more technical support time and lost instructional time, and impedes district and school software upgrades as newer software cannot be implemented on older equipment. However, even with this limitation, Technology Services works to compensate for this impact.

Finance and Operations
The total combined reduction in expenses for Finance and Operations is $1.1 million.

The $435,983 in budget reductions proposed by Finance fall within two categories:

• purchased services (-$24,382) and
• supplies and materials (-$411,601).

The purchased services reductions include but are not limited to contracted services, rental fees and bank service fees. Decreases in office supplies/materials budgets and local textbook dollars comprise the balance of the reductions proposed by finance.

The $700,178.73 in budget reductions proposed by the operations department include

• personnel (-10 positions) = (-$324,046),
• purchased services (-$330,402),
• supplies/materials (-$44,230) and
• license and title fees (-$1,500).

The position reductions consist of 10 custodial positions to be eliminated as a result of the average cleanable square footage formula for school custodians being increased from 20,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet. This formula is used to determine the number of custodians needed by a particular site. With the purchase of modernized floor buffing and bathroom cleaning equipment, the productivity level will increase, thus rendering less staff requirements. The 2010-11 budget cuts included 5.5 custodial positions. Routine vacancies will be filled with substitutes or by temporary services for the remainder of the 2011-12 fiscal year due to the anticipated amount of 2012-13 budget cuts. The reduction of custodial positions will be accomplished through existing vacancies.

The purchased services reductions include, but are not limited to, contracted services, staff development, other professional/technical services (i.e., planning/design/surveying services, appraisals, legal land descriptions, fees for items like zoning changes),  waste management (i.e., contracted garbage collection service, recycling, rental of garbage trucks), contracted repairs/maintenance of buildings and equipment, rentals/leases, heating oil, contracted pupil transportation, postage, telecommunications services and mobile communication. Decreases in office supplies/materials, oil/tires/tubes for the operation of vehicles and license/title fees for maintenance equipment comprise the balance of the reductions proposed by operations.

In addition to the budget reductions proposed by operations above, the 2012-13 budget includes a recurring $1 million in energy savings; a recurring $700,000 in savings as a result of implementing a multi-tier transportation system in 2011-12; and an additional $400,000 in savings associated with the multi-tier system.

Energy Conservation Program 
GCS continues to receive significant benefits from the strategic plan energy conservation program as a source of budget reductions. The energy team will continue energy assessments at school sites with the purpose of developing and implementing specific energy conservation measures. Many schools participated in the “Energy Wise” program in 2010-11, and the program was expanded to include more than half of our schools in the 2011-12 school year. By using a schedule of four 10-hour days during the summer break (mid-June through mid-August, 2011), we realized energy savings of $508,413, well above the projected $200,000 we expected to save. The four-day summer work week schedule will be implemented again during the 2012 summer break.

Multi-Tier Transportation System
On March 24, 2011, the Board of Education approved a new multi-tier bus schedule for the 2011-12 school year. The changes reduced transportation operating costs and increased efficiency. The transportation department removed 23 buses from service and the district’s efficiency rating is projected to increase by 3.2 to 5 percent. These changes did not cause any of our transportation employees to lose jobs, as the reductions were absorbed through attrition.