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Schools

Wilcox: Cut hundreds of jobs

The Pinellas schools chief, aiming to trim nearly $20-million from the budget, wants to end or reassign 350 full-time positions.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
Published February 14, 2006

Hundreds of Pinellas school employees would lose their jobs or have working conditions significantly altered under a list of spending cuts proposed Monday by superintendent Clayton Wilcox.

The plan is aimed at cutting $19.7-million in expenses for next year's budget, but it also signals a broader shift to what Wilcox envisions as a pared-down school system focused more on its primary mission.

"I've got too many people doing things we can't afford for them to do anymore," he said in an interview after presenting his plan to the School Board. "I have window glazers, I have architects and everything in between. It seems to me, fundamentally, I've got to decide, "What am I good at?' What I'm good at is teaching and learning."

All told under Wilcox's plan, about 350 of the district's full-time staff of nearly 15,000 would lose their jobs or be reassigned. Another 27 part-time staffers - out of a part-time work force of 6,400 - would be directly affected as well.

The School Board is expected to shorten the list as it digs into the issue in coming days and weeks. The board will hold two budget workshops, including one on Feb. 28, followed by a final vote on the cuts scheduled for March 14.

Wilcox's suggested cuts totaled $26.3-million, leaving the board some leeway as it decides how to reach the required reduction of $19.7-million.

"We have not given you anything that, while painful, we cannot live with," Wilcox told board members, who asked him to come back with more details for their next workshop.

He said his staff examined the list with an eye toward race and other factors to ensure that no group of employees was disproportionately touched by the cuts.

Gone under his proposal would be many of the "support" jobs that enable the state's seventh-largest school district to handle workaday tasks in-house.

Among the jobs Wilcox would cut: 11 trades workers, including a plumber, a locksmith and a sheet metal worker; 12 computer technicians; four paint and body mechanics; six equipment parts specialists; a roofer; and a boiler mechanic.

Those and many others caught in the fiscal vise are based at the Walter Pownall Service Center, the district's sprawling warehouse complex at Belcher Road and 118th Avenue in Largo.

The pain also would reach into the district's administrative offices, with cuts to Wilcox's staff, the district's personnel and communications departments and its computer networking department. Of note are some sizable reductions in the curriculum division.

Thirty-five teachers on "special assignment" at various schools would be told to return to classrooms. Another 28 teachers who work one-on-one with struggling elementary school readers would handle much larger classes.

"I don't know quite how my particular staff can work any harder than they already do, but I guess we'll find out," said Jan Rouse, an associate superintendent who heads the curriculum and instruction division.

She described as "simply untrue" the perception by some that the administration building is flush with well-paid staffers who do little.

Throughout the district Monday, supervisors were breaking the news of impending cuts to the employees most affected. Wilcox described one such talk he had with an employee in his office.

"It was tearful," he said. "But in the interest of fairness, I think you've got to tell people that their life is being talked about."

Also under his plan, substitute teachers would be in less demand under an incentive plan that would reward schools that kept absentee rates to a minimum.

More than 100 full- and part-time plant operators - the employees who clean and maintain schools - would lose their jobs under a new formula for setting a school's maintenance staff. At present, the formula calls for one person to clean and maintain 24,000 square feet of space. The new formula would increase that to 28,000 square feet.

"I don't think we're going to get the same job done," said Bill Angelus, a district bus driver and a leader of the union representing service employees, including plant operators. "And then, why pick on the lowest paid department? Most plant operators get paid $8.75 or $9 an hour."

Wilcox's plan also would call for slowing the implementation of a controversial program that tests and closely tracks students' academic progress as they move through the year.

Developed by the New York-based education company Kaplan Inc., the program is in 55 schools and was expected to grow. But many teachers and district officials are not pleased with how it has been rolled out.

Putting a temporary hold on the program would save about $1-million, Wilcox said.

His plan also calls for realigning the district's services for problem students assigned to alternative schools. Three of those schools - PTEC-South Secondary, Norwood Secondary and North Ward Secondary, all in St. Petersburg - would be closed and relocated to better serve students throughout the county.

The district also would save $3.6-million by ending its contract with Community Education Partners, a private firm that operates an alternative school for the school system in Pinellas Park.

[Last modified February 14, 2006, 18:13:04]