Parents Voice Concerns about Capital Reserve, Teacher Layoffs at NHP-GCP School Board Meeting

Several concerned parents voiced their opinions on the allocation of funds and the use of capital reserves in Monday night's budget meeting. Preventing layoffs and reducing program cuts for the kids were perhaps the biggest concerns of the night amongst parents and speakers.  

Krissie Kueffner, a parent in the district, was worried about programs being cut for the students while an $8.5 million capital reserve was built up over a four-year period.

“I’m just trying to understand how this whole process works,” she told the school board. “I don’t understand why children’s programs are being cut, when we managed to save eight million dollars … if we are saving money, why are we still cutting programs?”

Superintendent of Schools assured Kueffner and other parents that the money saved towards the capital reserve is an amount designated at the end of the school year by the board and is used towards paying down the debt which will in turn reduce the tax levy. He also reminded the audience that $600,000 of this money goes towards taxpayers.

“What the board did was to be  more prudently and fiscally responsible with that money,” Katulak said.

Franck Cienski, another concerned parent, presented the school board with a list of nearly 20 budget related items which was a collection of comments, questions, concerns and recommendations from parents he and other PTA members gathered over the course of time.

Cienski proposed using a portion of the capital reserves to offset some of the budget and save the state the 37% which was promised to the district. He also proposed enforcing a minimum force agreement which would keep people working at a lower rate as opposed to laying them off.  

“We are concerned that we are going to lose anywhere from 10 to 25 teachers,” Cienski said. “We don’t want to anyone to get laid off.”

Cienski urged the district board members to consider some of the proposed recommendations with the hopes to prevent ending up in an austerity budget, which he fears would be worse for the schools and tax payers.

“I believe we have the intelligence, you can see the size of this group, we need to be creative in how we structure this, I would hope that everyone would put their best foot forward in considering these suggestions,” Cienski pleaded.

Taking into consideration the concerns of all parents both present and absent at the meeting, Katulak recommended they attend work sessions to become more informed on the financial climate of the district.