For a little over a year, the school board has noticed that spending seems to be out of control within the county. The board has recently taken precautions to ensure that spending is being reduced. These new changes have effects that are not always favorable but they have been deemed necessary in order to cut costs.
When the new superintendent, Jeff Eakins, took office in June, a wave of new budget reforms followed due to a renewed interest in the district’s spending. New policies have come into effect that are aimed to reduce spending. A major portion of the money being spent is on salaries for employees in the county. Because this is such a large area of expense, this is the primary place where these new policies are targeted.
“And so what they’ve started to do is look for places where they can either eliminate positions or when people retire or resign, not fill those until they can really get a handle because the largest expense for the school district is on employee salaries,” said Kelly King, principle of Steinbrenner High School.
Not only are these positions going to remain empty but other positions will be eliminated at all levels within the district. Both the district level and the school level will see losses in positions in an effort to keep spending under control.
“We are going to be losing one position. It is expected to happen at the end of this semester. Every school in the last couple of week has been notified if there are any positions that the school will be losing. These positions usually are not tied to a roster of students,” said King.
As it turns out, the position that is being eliminated from most schools in the district is the student success coach. Student success coaches are helpful to those students who are at risk of graduating and the success coach helps to establish a plan and acts as a mediator between the students and their teachers. Overall, this has the potential to negatively impact students as these coaches are very beneficial not just for the students that they work with but also they serve as a positive symbol for the school.
Though this decision may look grim, it is predicted to save money as that is the school board’s main goal right now.
“I do understand the need to make sure that our salary expenditures are not higher than the money that’s being brought in. No business or organization can operate like that and at the end of the day it’s taxpayer money so we do have to be fiscally responsible with that. I think in any organization that’s as large as we are you have to always be looking for ways that you can cut costs and be more fiscally responsible in what you’re doing,” said King.
Other policies aside from the position situation are currently taking place.
“They’ve been looking at travel reimbursements because a lot of money gets paid out for people who are traveling. Also looking at the rationale behind some of the expenditures that happen. Can schools really justify the need for either personnel or to be sending people to trainings…Some of our supply budget money has been cut as well and that started happening last school year and so we have to become a little more creative in how we supplement that because at the end of the day we don’t want you as the students to feel the impact from that,” said King.
The school board has taken measured steps in getting the budget back under control through many recent policies that have been implemented. Although these decisions are made at the district level, we as the schools of Hillsborough county will still feel the effects of these new standards as they begin to take place.
Lauren Johnston//Staff Writter
