By Eric Bradner, Journal & Courier
INDIANAPOLIS - Asked to brainstorm ways Indiana schools could slash $300 million in funding without laying off teachers, the Indiana State Board of Education on Thursday worked toward a list of recommendations that could include a wage freeze for school employees.
The list will be finalized at the board's January meeting, and then sent to Indiana's school corporations.
For now, board members agreed to send a list of possible steps to Gov. Mitch Daniels today.
Pay freezes - which the board can recommend, but not mandate - won't be on the list the governor receives today. But the idea was discussed Thursday, and state schools chief Tony Bennett predicted it will be included on the January list.
"Absolutely, I'm recommending (a wage freeze), if that's what's necessary to keep teachers working," Bennett said. "My recommendation would be that everyone have skin in the game."
Doing so could save $89 million in teacher salaries alone, said Amy Matthews, general counsel for the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board. She said her group didn't have statistics that included administrators and support staff, but that if their wages were frozen as well, the savings would climb higher.
Nate Schnellenberger, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, noted that discussions seemed to leap immediately to salary freezes.
"I find it a little bit upsetting to me that teacher salaries are perceived to be too high. We must remember that a teacher is a professional," he said.
Still, he said that while the association won't specifically instruct local teachers unions to restructure their contracts to forgo pay increases, it does find merit in the idea.
Also on the preliminary list are measures such as having school corporations join a state health plan that might cost less; eliminating some administrators; considering consolidation; joining with others to buy supplies in bulk; and allowing schools to use money originally dedicated to transportation and building to be used instead to cover general operating costs.
Steve Gookins, the retired superintendent of the Delaware Community School Corp., said districts should consider finding volunteers to lead extracurricular activities and charging participation fees to cover transportation costs.
"We have put so much emphasis and so much money into extracurricular in our schools. I don't want to say this harshly, but I don't know how that improves graduation rates and our ISTEP scores," he said.
Bennett said the across-the-board cuts of at least 3 percent of what each school corporation originally was budgeted can be managed without losing a single teacher if school corporations think outside the box. He said they should re-examine their budget structures.
"This is not a short-term problem, and this is not a problem that will yield a short-term fix," Bennett said. "We have to view these issues as, how are we helping school corporations fundamentally examine themselves and reset their budgets for very difficult times and for a long-term solution."
Thursday's discussion was in response to a decision by Daniels in the wake of reduced revenue forecasts to cut $300 million from elementary and secondary education.
The board will recommend to Daniels that the cuts begin next month but no further cuts be made through the 2010 calendar year. That way, board members said, schools would know what to expect.