AISD board approves 485 staffing cuts

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Monday night, the Austin school board unanimously voted in favor of cutting 485 positions, but in the process decided to save 52 elementary school librarians. The staffing plan eliminates 272 elementary teachers, 229 middle school and high school teachers, three high school assistant principals, 35 parent support specialists and 22 middle school and high school librarians. It is the first round of many potential budget cuts over the next two school years to close a $113 million budget gap.

Board members went back and forth until close to midnight, many speaking in support of school librarians. In the end, they decided to change Superintendent Meria Carstarphen's proposal who said she could try and find $600,000 worth of savings elsewhere, which accounts for the elementary librarians. Cutting 22 secondary librarians would give the district a savings of $1.3 million.

"These are the decisions that tear our guts out," said Trustee Sam Guzman.

The district said they will try and move affected employees into vacant positions.

Many librarians were in the standing room only crowd inside board chambers Monday night. So much so, many had to stand and listen outside. Teachers were seated on the floor, in seats and standing along the walls holding signs to fight to save their jobs. With the elimination of teachers, the district plans on increasing class size, cutting down on teacher planning time and adding class periods during the day on certain campuses.

"If we have more kids in the classroom, it will be very difficult," said Ken Zarifis of Education Austin. "Increasing the class size will simply eat away at the teacher's ability to manage well, to see that their classroom is orderly and focused on the lesson."

The proposed change is increasing pre-k class size from 18 students to 20. All other teachers maximum class size would jump from 22 to 24.

"The district is always emphasizing the importance of differentiated learning where some students are high and some are low," said teacher Montserrat Garibay. "If we have so many, it's going to be very difficult to be able to teach them so they can be successful."

In the large crowd there were also dozens of parents with "save our school" signs from the nine schools on the possible closure list. A facilities task force continues to try and hash out how to shave more money off the budget and avoid closing schools.

But, because of the packed crowd inside, teachers and parents had to also huddle outside to watch the meeting on a monitor.

“I'm trying to save my job and other jobs,” said Thomas Clark, who is an AISD teacher's assistant.

Many standing in groups outside held signs identifying them as an art teacher or a librarian, two of the positions that are up for elimination by the school board.

“We impact every teacher in every way and every student in every way,” said Clayton Elementary librarian Jeanie Tuttle. She is concerned with the proposal to staff one librarian for up to three schools.

“That would mean, if that were me, I would see one student once every three weeks. I would be in charge of three collections, three orderings, three inventories, and I would try to teach 3,000 children. And who will suffer? The children,” she said.

About 50 art and music teaching positions are also on the table for elimination.

“You have to be able listen to children sing individually if you really want to teach them and that's not going to teach them and that's not going to happen with 35 kids in a class,” said Dr. Jennifer Art, music teacher for Allison Elementary.

Allison elementary art teacher Laney McCormick says, “We are potentially seeing 40 kids in an art classroom. I don't know how you intend to safely paint, cut, and glue, and teach the whole child in an art room setting with that many kids. It's crowd control and it gets very alarming.”