Partnershop for Prosperity

By Arlene Marie Staich

Suggested places to cut costs.

"Partnership for Prosperity"

Redondo Beach Unified School District operates with a yearly budget of over $55 million. In addition, the District carries almost $10 million in various special funds and accounts. We also have millions of dollars of bond income and expenditures. It is crucial that we have a school board that understands how to use this money for the maximum gain in the classroom. The Teachers Choice Team of Carl Clark, Arlene Staich and Jane Diehl have a combined 26 years of public school classroom teaching, 33 years in business and 10 years as PTA presidents--Experience That You Can Trust!

The blueprint below represents common-sense approaches to the Redondo Beach school budget. These ideas result in potential savings for the classroom budget of almost $2,000,000 through cuts in bureaucracy and the implementation of new ideas and initiatives. Some of the proposals here should be familiar to the Redondo Beach community in that many are a return to the past practices of the former Redondo Beach Superintendent Beverly Rohrer.

Our first premise is that Every Dollar Counts; we need accountability for how our money has been spent in the past and is currently being spent. To this end, we will begin to encourage community participation to help provide an independent analysis over past expenditures on:

1.Consultants
2.Technology duplication
3.Abandoned technology experiments

Our second premise is that the school's finite resources must be focused on the classroom, not the bureaucracy. With the state facing unprecedented budget challenges, our students must be protected. And, considering the increased challenges in the classroom that our teachers are facing, we must keep our focus on the classroom. Therefore, we pledge to keep the dollars in the classroom. Our priorities include:

Protecting class size reduction. We will stop any attempted increase in class size. Our classrooms are already too overcrowded.

We will compensate our employees fairly and we will ensure their salaries and health & welfare benefits keep pace with cost of living adjustments.

Our goal is to find at least an overall 2% reduction in the district budget, representing over $900,000 of precious taxpayer money, by changing current district bureaucratic practices to cut waste:

1.We will eliminate the Public Relations department-- we should keep money in the classroom, not for spin & fluff-- for an estimated yearly savings of over $200,000.

2.We will integrate the information and technology systems of BNET and Technology Lab into a 21st Century Classroom program to better prepare our students for careers and further education. To accomplish these goals we will reconfigure the Information Services Department to achieve an estimated yearly savings of $250,000.

3.We will institute an across-the-board 10% cut on all district office and school board member expenditures for an estimated yearly savings of $340,000.

4.We will rollback last year's 18.75% salary increase for the school board's attorneys for an estimated savings of $40,000.

5.We will freeze the hiring of expensive outside consultants. Instead we shall recruit and use the expertise of teachers, parents, and community residents for an estimated annual savings of over $100,000.

6.We will freeze all general budget expenditures for out-of-town conferences and other such expenses for administrators and school board members.

7.If the state budget crisis requires further cost-savings measures we will investigate reassigning select administrators and assistant principals to 20% teaching duties or substitute duties.

In addition to our cost saving plans above, we believe the district can save over an additional $900,000 for the classroom budget through common sense initiatives and ideas in order to help steer us through this state budget crisis. If elected to the school board, we pledge to:

1.Institute early retirement incentives to employees for a potential yearly savings of over $300,000.

2.Stop diverting classroom money from the general budget to spend on capital outlay and equipment, and instead use Capital Outlay fund accounts. This would free up an additional $400,000+ for the classroom to benefit students directly.

3.Institute a Health & Welfare Self-Insured Trust such as the Torrance Trust that will include a Wellness Program to keep teachers healthy, morale high, and keep substitute teacher costs to a minimum. If we can secure the cooperation of the employee associations, we can achieve at least a $250,000 annual savings and provide better benefits.