The Rochester City School District could cut just over 50 full-time positions at the Central Office in next school year’s budget.
The Rochester school board and district leaders held three budget deliberation meetings in the last two weeks. The process has coincided with the board’s search for a new interim superintendent to work alongside current superintendent Carmine Peluso before taking over full responsibilities in July.
In the latest meeting this week Peluso, who will resign at the end of June, said the end of federal stimulus funding means roughly 200 positions will need to be cut. The aim is to make those reductions without affecting classrooms, he said.
“The departments in Central Office took one of the largest hits from American Rescue Plan funds,” Peluso said at a meeting on Tuesday. “We really made some tough decisions, not easy decisions, but it was about making sure that resources are as close to the schools as possible.”
Those Central Office staff cuts would hit the finance, human capital, communications, school chiefs and grant departments. Other staff reductions would include teachers on assignment and building substitutes.
While the district looks at cutting positions, officials said they are also looking at opportunities to build a diverse teaching staff — an initiative that would require money and resources that are not continuing into next school year.
"If we are going to grow teachers and develop teachers, we have to have funding to support tuition or incentives,” Chief of Human Capital Chris Miller said in a meeting last week. “Through the American Rescue Plan Act, we were able to have dollars to fund both of those things.... We did receive a very generous grant from the Department of Labor, and so that's continuing some of that work.”
The district also plans to fold more student support services into the fabric of schools, including telehealth accessibility on school campuses and placing a full-time counselor at each elementary school.
Food services would also get an updated menu, and would pull $1.5 million from the district’s general fund balance.
With the $1.1 billion total budget for next school year, the district is proposing $13.2 million for athletics with increased programming throughout the school year, most of it for the middle school level.
Deputy Superintendent DeMario Strickland said there would be a nearly $750,000 increase in the budget for bilingual programming and world languages. That includes six more full-time elementary school bilingual teachers, a few bilingual special education teachers and bilingual social services staff. World language offerings would expand to include Mandarin and Arabic.
School board president Cynthia Elliott said she’d rather see African languages taught in schools.
“I don’t necessarily want to learn other peoples’ language if I don’t know my own, where I come from,” Elliott said. “Some of us, we’ve learned more history that has come out of Israel and so ... I think it’s important for our students to be exposed to some of the African languages.”
The Rochester Board of Education is scheduled to vote to adopt the budget on Tuesday, May 7.
