TC board: No layoffs

 

T uba City Unified School District must find a way to cut nearly $5 million out of its proposed budget for the 2009-10 school year, or face bankruptcy and receivership.

And it will have to do it without laying off a single person.

That was the decision of the school board Wednesday night as it rejected 3-2 a 15 percent staff reduction proposed by Superintendent Bill Higgins.

Instead, the board passed an alternate motion by Judy Begay that Higgins meet with faculty and staff at each school and get ideas for other ways to find the money.

He will have to do it quickly: the cash-strapped state of Arizona has given its public school districts a deadline of April 15 to put forward their budgets.

About 100 people, mostly faculty and staff, jammed the boardroom, some nervous or angry after receiving letters that said their contracts would not be renewed if the board accepted Higgins' proposal.

Sixty-two jobs, from non-degreed staffers to principals, were on the line.

For some, it became a racial issue as the white-haired, blue-eyed Higgins faced a mostly Native crowd.

"What happened to Navajo preference?" asked one woman, noting that some Anglos were keeping their jobs while Natives were being laid off.

"Indigenous people would not do this," declared reading specialist Rose Hulligan, whose job was one of those on the chopping block. "We've been oppressed again and again and again. This is discrimination at its height."

"I was told you go get your degree, you come back and help your people," said academic counselor June Birdsong, who said she has two master's degrees. "This is kind of hard to take from a non-Navajo."

Higgins said during his presentation that he had asked administrators at each school to make the cuts, based on each staffer's qualifications and the needs of the district. Indian preference was used "if all things are equal," he said.

The superintendent argued that the district is long overdue for a staff reduction, budget deficit or not. The long-time educator drew a graph on the chalkboard indicating that staffing levels have remained almost constant from 2000 to 2009 even as the student body has plummeted from 2,700 to 1,900.

While some have blamed the enrollment slide on defections to Grey Hills Academy and the new Tuba City Bureau of Indian Education Boarding School, Higgins said the real culprit is simply a declining birth rate.

The last of what pundits have dubbed the "Echo Boomers" – children of the Baby Boomers – graduated last year, he said.

The decline in the per capita funding a district gets, coupled with cuts at both the state and federal levels, have left districts across Arizona — indeed, across most of the country — in the same mess, Higgins noted.

"At least we aren't as bad as Flagstaff," he said. "They had to cut $21 million last night."

Higgins said proposing the staff reduction was very difficult, and even his proposal would leave a $2 million deficit that would have to be made up some other way.

It's possible the state Legislature could take restrictions off "impact aid" funding the poorer schools get that would allow it to be applied to salaries, but Higgins said the district can't count on that although he and the board have been lobbying hard for state and federal dollars.

"It's terrible," he said. "I don't like it. It's heavy. It's heavy every day."

Some board members remained unconvinced that a layoff was the solution.

Marie Wheeler, looking over the list of proposed non-renewals, said she was suspicious of the weed-out process.

"We have seasoned teachers listed here," she said. "Certified, even highly certified … above all, I want to extend Native preference to anybody who would like to be employed by the district."

Board President Mary Worker made a motion to accept Higgins' proposal, but it was defeated 3-2, with Alan Numkena siding with Wheeler and Begay and Linda Honahni voting "aye" alongside Worker.

Begay's substitute motion passed 4-1, with Worker the lone dissenter.

"For the school to go into receivership or bankruptcy is not acceptable to me," she stated.

Begay said she was confident that if "everybody gives a little," the district can get back in the black "without playing with people's lives."

"I'm pleading with each and every one of you," she said, looking over the crowd, "if you have a solution, come forward.

"It's a tough decision," she added, "but I'm sitting here thinking I know it's the right decision."

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