March 24, 2009

The following letter was issued by Superintendent David Schauer to all Kyrene staff.

» More Information on the Kyrene Budget

Dear Kyrene,

In these difficult financial times, we are working with the District Leadership Council (DLC) and with our Governing Board to plan for the 2009-2010 budget.  Since approximately 90% of our budget is in salaries, we do not have many options when we are facing budget challenges. We have to make our contract decisions now because of statutory timelines, even though our funding levels are uncertain.  The DLC recently considered a list of 21 budget reduction ideas and expressed their level of support for each one of these items. The items came from the efficiency ideas that we solicited from our staff and community members.  These were used to develop a variety of scenarios that range from better to worse depending on funding levels received from the state. These scenarios were shared with our Governing Board on March 17 and are posted on our website.

Tonight, I am making a recommendation that the Governing Board takes unusual and unprecedented action. In this recommendation, I will ask the Governing Board to:

• Enact a Reduction in Force for all first year teachers (these are continuing teachers that are in the T-3 category)

• Give the district the authority to reduce salaries by 1% to as much as 5%.

When a recommendation is made to the Governing Board they either take action to approve the recommendation, table the recommendation, request additional information about the item, or deny the recommendation.

While we are hopeful that the eventual solutions to our budget challenges are more moderate than those listed above, this action would enable us to balance the budget under the very worst of circumstances.   As we know more about what positions will be available due to budget limitations, we will hire back as many teachers as possible and determine whether salary reductions for administrators, teachers, and support staff will need to be made.  Principals are in the process of speaking personally to teachers who could be affected by this Reduction In Force.

I know this is difficult for all of us to hear and it’s certainly not something we want to do, but this flexibility allows us to be most prepared to react to whatever the legislature decides.

We are committed to sharing updates and news regarding our budget with you as soon as information becomes available.   You can view these updates and submit your own budget efficiency ideas on our budget page at www.kyrene.org.

Sincerely,

David Schauer, Superintendent

 

Back to Top