District 31 officials to consider new round of cuts in case tax hike referendum fails

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Updated: February 20, 2012 9:07AM

The West Northfield Elementary School District 31 School Board next week will consider another $800,000 in spending cuts officials say must be made if voters turn down a tax hike referendum next spring.

The cuts would come on top of about $1.8 million the district has already cut from the budget.

Those cuts included about $1 million through the elimination of many extracurricular and after school activities and sports programs the district made after a referendum that would have increased the district’s maximum tax rate by 49 cents per $100 equalized assessed valuation failed.

The new cuts the district will consider are even deeper and will impact the educational program, said Superintendent Alexandra Nicholson.

“We unfortunately have to look at deep cuts this time,” Nicholson said. She declined to specify what programs and services are on the list the board will look at until the board discusses it.

That discussion is set for its Jan. 26 board meeting. It begins at 7 p.m. in the Learning Center at Field School, 2055 Landwehr Road.

Nicholson said some of the discussion on the cuts will be done in a closed session because they impact specific employees. However, she said, the board will continue the discussion and vote in an open meeting.

The board voted in December to place a referendum on the March 20 ballot asking district voters to approve a 27-cent tax rate increase in hopes of raising an additional $1.55 million in revenue.

Nicholson said that with two rounds of cuts already made, the district is looking at things that for the most part will impact the educational program in District 31.

In order to tackle the problem officials put together a comprehensive list of everything that is not mandated by law for the district to provide.

While such things as bilingual education are required, others such as the district’s literacy specialist are not.

She also cited the communications department which provides district newsletters and similar information to parents and the community in general as something not required by law.

“These cuts are going to impact the educational program,” Nicholson said. “We’ve already made $1.8 million in reductions. There’s very little left that won’t impact education.”

The second step in the process was a survey of staff and parents, asking them to select from a list the three areas they would prefer to cut and the three areas they would most want to save.

Though the bulk of the responses were from the staff, Nicholson said “it gave us the ability to get a pulse of what people are thinking. We took the responses very seriously.”

The information from the survey and the list of possible cuts were given to a special committee that reviewed and discussed them at a Jan. 10 meeting. The committee put together a list that was then given to administrators for a final review.

The 22-member committee included several staff members, a half dozen parents and two other community members, she said.

“We reviewed every single item that could possibly be cut,” Nicholson said.”We listed the impact the could would have ion the educational processes a whole.”

Finally, she said, the “administrative cabinet” composed of Nicholson, the district’s school principals and Cathy Lauria, director of business services, went over the list and prepared the final one for the board to consider at next week’s meeting.

“I feel like it was a pretty thorough process, a very thorough process,” Nicholson said. “I’m hoping by the end of the Jan. 26 meeting the board will have a plan.”