The Syracuse City School District Board of Education voted to cut more than 90 jobs within the city’s public school system amid budget cuts, inefficient state funding and shifts in enrollment rates.

Five school board members voted to remove roughly 97 positions, which is expected to save the city $6.4 million, said Suzanne Slack, chief financial officer of the SCSD. Most of the positions to be cut are middle school guidance counselors and peer observers hired to improve teaching techniques in English and math classes, she said.

The new budget plans targeted the two occupations because of the growing number of guidance counselors in middle schools and the depleting funds for peer observers. Peer observers cost the city more than $1 million per year, Slack said.

“We had built up additional guidance counselors, and we felt that the job could be done by one guidance counselor per middle school,” she said. “The peer observers were being paid from the Teacher Incentive Fund, and we stopped getting the funding for that because the state’s funding was reduced.”

Syracuse Common Councilor-At-Large Lance Denno said in an email that he disagrees with the budget cuts because he believes they will be a disservice to the many children in Syracuse’s public schools. He said he blames the state legislature for the school board’s declining funds, but reluctantly accepts the consequences of the cuts.

“Much of this is directly related to the basic problem of our public education finance system being based all across the country on local property taxes,” he said. “Budget cuts are not the right way to address it, but Syracuse taxpayers simply cannot make up the funding gap.”

With 51 percent of the city’s property tax-exempt, Syracuse’s school funds fall at a great disadvantage compared to suburban areas, which New York state officials have recognized, Denno said.

In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York in 2006, the New York State Court of Appeals ordered the state legislature to give more funding to disproportionately funded school districts, including Syracuse, said Board of Education President Stephen Swift. Swift added that with New York state’s consequent inaction leading to a shrinking school budget, the SCSD has considered “re-suing” the state.

The decreased state funding has exhausted the school board’s resources and continues to restrict the schools’ ability to educate, Swift said.

“We’re the fifth largest school district in New York state and we’re failing miserably to educate kids,” he said. “We cut about 20 percent of our workforce in the last four years and our student population hasn’t changed. The superintendent has done a masterful job of cutting where we can, but you get to a point where you can’t cut anymore without hurting the animal.”

Slack, CFO of the school district, said almost every school in the city district will be affected, as the new budget plan also shuffles teachers and changes staffing sizes at schools. Elementary and middle schools are expected to have more teachers as enrollment rates continue to increase in the city’s public schools, she said. But Syracuse high schools will see a reduction in the amount of teachers as a result of under-enrolled courses across the city, Slack said.

One change comes to Percy Hughes Pre-K-8 School, which will downsize to teach only from pre-K through fifth grade, The Post-Standard reported March 19. Current middle school students are likely to be moved to various schools across the city, according to the article. Slack said school board officials hope these changes will bring better test scores, higher graduation rates and better class performance.

Published on March 27, 2013 at 2:04 am

Contact Alfred: alng@syr.edu

@alfredwkng