The WW-P district should charge higher fees for outside organizations who use school facilities and focus on entering more shared services agreements.
Meanwhile, class sizes should be kept small — a priority that most of the 139 adult residents and 36 students who attended last month’s two community forums agreed should be the last area the district looks to make cuts during current and future budget deliberations.
The results of the two community forums were presented on March 8 by Dan Myers, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University who ran the forums on February 12 and 15 aimed at providing the public with opportunities to weigh in on areas in the budgeting process that the district should prioritize.
Participants in the forums were given a survey to fill out as well as a packet with discussion points used to guide the conversation and give their input as they discussed their ideas with other members of the community.
At each table, five participants were given a packet that contained seven of the 13 main areas school district officials were evaluating. Participants were asked to rank those seven areas based on what they felt the district should prioritize in the case of any cuts.
The forum focused on 13 areas of the budget: class sizes; shared services; restructuring school programs; curriculum changes; corporate sponsorship; sports teams; online courses; staffing; transportation; world languages; facilities use; teachers/staff stipends; and creation of fee-based programs.
Myers presented the average ranking of a list of 13 areas participants in the community forum were asked to rank on a scale of 1 to 7. A ranking of 1 signified an area where the board should look to make changes first, while 7 was an area the board should look last to make cuts or changes.
The data was presented in three ways — the average group ranking, based on responses from each of the discussion tables; the average individual ranking of each participant; and student rankings.
The area of facilities use — like charging more for out-of-district groups to use school buildings, charging more to use athletic fields, turf fields, and playgrounds — was ranked an average of 1.7 in both group and individual rankings.
“This was, by far, the most popular change,” said Myers. “The comments were particularly detailed on this. Some people said this was a pretty easy decision.” Myers listed comments from respondents, who suggested increasing payment per use of the facility, even though the dollar impact may be small.
“The second most popular among non-student groups was the amount of shared services,” said Myers. Shared services — for example, creating partnerships with other districts to share services for purchasing supplies; sharing administrators; sharing busing services; purchasing supples — had an average ranking of 1.9 among groups and 2.1 among individuals. Contrarily, students ranked this area an average of 5.
“Students in particular were worried about sharing administrators across districts,” Myers said.
Within that category, however, Myers noted that participants were divided in their opinions on sharing busing. Students said they felt that sharing teachers and administrators would lead to a “bad school climate” and foster “less personal attachment/relationship between students and faculty.”
The third most popular area that participants felt should be changed was in the area of corporate sponsorship (for example, increasing revenue by grant writing and finding corporate sponsorship or programs and events), which received an average ranking of 2.8 among groups and 3 among individuals. On average, students gave this area a ranking of 4.3.
“It’s worth noting that with the shared services and corporate sponsorship, the students were more skeptical of the changes to these areas than non-students,” Myers explained. “Students, on the other hand, appeared to be more favorable toward changes in online courses and the area of restructuring school programs.”
Most of the non-students said they felt corporate sponsorship was acceptable if managed well. Some suggested restricting sponsorship to local businesses.
When it came to areas that the board should not cut, the area that received the highest ranking — or the area that should be changed last — was class sizes. On average, groups ranked this area at 6.1, while individuals ranked it as 5.8.
Participants said that the class sizes should be kept small or as is, between 24 and 30 students, and they “should not increase from 20-25, especially at middle/elementary school level.”
Students suggested that physical education classes should be larger.
After class size, world languages — which averaged a ranking of 5 among groups and 5.3 among individuals — and sports teams followed as being important to the participants.
Participants said that world languages keep students competitive in the global community, but also said that undersubscribed languages might be considered for cutting.
When it came to sports teams, group rankings averaged 5.0, while individual rankings were at 5.1. Student rankings put sports at an average of 6.
“This was an area that was very important,” said Myers. “Students were fairly opposed to cutting sports.”
Among the comments from participants was the notion that the district should try charging an activity fee to cover costs before making cuts to the area. Participants also pointed out that middle school sports were already cut in half.
Myers included a list of other ideas that were commonly discussed during the group discussions. Among those suggestions was to share clubs and languages across schools; cut tuition reimbursement for graduate classes or require a commitment to stay in district for a number of years; eliminate tenure, cut teacher salaries, and require greater teacher contribution to healthcare; outsource administrative tasks like HR, payroll, purchasing, and technology support; and examine the special services budget.
Students recommended cutting unimportant clubs that are used for “resume padding.”
Superintendent Victoria Kniewel reiterated during the presentation that the categories discussed were “simply topics for discussion” and that no decisions had been made.
“We’re not just planning for budgets, but for years out,” she said.
Kniewel did suggest, though, that the district form an ad-hoc committee to study building use, based on suggestions from the public to target facilities use.
