Hundreds of positions and investments are on the chopping block in Jefferson County Public Schools under a proposal from JCPS Superintendent Brian Yearwood.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting obtained slide decks detailing the proposed cuts presented at a principals’ meeting Tuesday.
The slides show Yearwood plans to propose $142 million in cuts. His plan would save $44 million by cutting 300 positions Yearwood said were central office staff. Supplemental and add-on funding for schools would be cut by $41 million and another $30 million would come via “potential cuts pending negotiations.”
The proposal, crafted behind closed doors, was initially shared with the Jefferson County Board of Education in December. JCPS denied a KyCIR request for the proposal in December, saying the materials were “preliminary.”
Yearwood has previously said the district needs to make deep cuts to solve a massive budget shortfall he has estimated at $188 million. Those figures took the members of the Jefferson County Board of Education by surprise when staff made a financial presentation in September. The previous estimate provided to the board under former JCPS superintendent Marty Pollio was $150 million over two years. Pollio retired at the end of June.
Yearwood shared his plan with principals one week before the board is scheduled to vote on the reductions on Jan. 20. The district and board have still not made the information available to the broader community or shared details.
Here are the figures presented by Yearwood Tuesday.
- $44 million though Central office staff & reorganization (300 positions “eliminated”)
- $41 million in supplemental and add-on programs
- $30 million in other “potential cuts pending negotiations”
- $13 million in operations and transportation
- $9 million in contracts and subscriptions
- $5 million in facilities and “underutilized assets”
The cuts to supplemental funding raised alarms among some administrators, according to a principal who spoke with KyCIR. KyCIR is not identifying the principal because she was not authorized to speak on the proposal.
The plan would axe $18 million in funding schools receive through the “Needs Index,” a formula that assigns schools extra funding based on their share of low-income students and students of color. Also on the cutting board is more than $3 million in funding for multilingual students, a rapidly growing population in JCPS.
The administrator who spoke with KyCIR said she was particularly concerned about $14 million in cuts to funding for Academic Instructional Coaches (AICs). AICs often manage required periodic testing of students, analyze the results, and help strategize how to improve instruction. AICs are also “critical” in coaching the many inexperienced and emergency-certified teachers classrooms now rely on amid a nationwide teacher shortage, the administrator said. She said many principals were upset they were not consulted as Yearwood and his team crafted the budget.
“Our voice was not invited to the table,” the principal said. “We could have front-loaded some of this information, proposed possible solutions that would still get you your budget cuts — and probably even more — but be less disruptive to school operations.”
The administrator also questioned whether the 300 positions deemed “central office” would really insulate schools from staffing cuts. She noted that positions like AICs are technically considered “central office” positions, even though they are school-based staff.
Proposed reductions also include $9 million in materials that were supposed to support the nascent districtwide curriculum — a move former JCPS superintendent Marty Pollio counted among his chief accomplishments.
A JCPS spokesperson did not answer questions about the proposal, instead saying Yearwood planned to present the proposal to the Audit & Risk Management Advisory Committee at 2 p.m. Wednesday.
Asked about the negotiations Yearwood referenced in his presentation, Jefferson County Teachers Association president Maddie Shepard said she couldn’t comment because the teachers’ union is actively bargaining.
