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Liberty schools committee approves district’s $1.2M plan
Liberty
The Liberty schools fiscal commission has approved the district’s $1.2 million deficit-reduction plan that will go into effect for fiscal year 2013.
The plan, approved unanimously at the commission’s meeting Monday, will eliminate 16.5 jobs in the district, including two administrative posts and 7.5 teachers beginning July 1, the start of the fiscal year.
Another 14 positions, including seven intervention specialists, will have their hours cut to part time.
The board of education also approved the plan at its Jan. 23 meeting.
Before the vote, the fiscal commission, which the state put in place to guide the school district out of fiscal emergency, asked very few questions about the positions.
Sharon Hanrahan, the state’s Office of Budget and Management representative on the commission, said as someone coming from Columbus, it is very easy for her to come and go from meetings without understanding the district’s needs.
“That’s why I believe that the [school district] should come up with the cuts,” Hanrahan said.
With the school district’s already implemented cuts for the current fiscal year, the district will be $1.7 million leaner in 2013 than it was in 2011.
The plan also budgets a projected $100,000 in increased spending due to employees having to work longer in order to cover the vacant positions.
For Watson, the cuts are personal but necessary given the district’s financial outlook.
“It’s people I know,” Watson told the commission before its vote. “It’s people whose lives are going to be turned around.”
Watson noted that the district’s and the teacher’s union will be entering contract negotiations in the next couple weeks.
Also at Monday’s meeting, representatives from the employee benefits consulting firm Grossman Consulting discussed the district’s healthcare savings over the last three years.
Cheryl Broadway of Grossman said that over the three-year contract with the district’s current insurance carrier, Anthem, the district saved $2.8 million compared to its former contract with Professional Benefits Administrators.
Grossman Consulting, out of Cleveland, has been advising the district since 2009 for $3,000 a month, Broadway said.
Fiscal commission member and Liberty Township Administrator Pat Ungaro asked Broadway why the firm does not shop around for other plans every year.
Broadway said health-care carriers would be less likely to negotiate with the district if they felt it was only shopping the market for the best plan.
It was a point that Ungaro said he heard before but with which he disagreed.
“I’ve never heard an insurance company say, ‘We don’t want your business,’” he said.