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The superintendent of the Judson Independent School District said Tuesday evening that his administration never planned to recommend mid-year layoffs to address the district’s budget deficit.
A draft of the district’s financial solvency plan written in October proposed implementing a reduction in force by February. Texas Public Radio obtained a copy of the document through an open records request, and published an article about the draft plans earlier this month.
However, during a specially called board meeting Tuesday evening, Superintendent Milton Fields said he wanted to make it clear that he would not be recommending people lose their jobs during the school year.
“We are not recommending that people get severance pay. We're not recommending that people lose their positions this year,” Fields said. “Mid-year (reduction in force) — we're not recommending that.”
“I just want to put that out there for everybody listening, that that was never a recommend(ation),” Fields added. “That was a first-round draft of us trying to get ready for what we would have to do.”
Another draft plan written in September also identified three schools for closure. However, Fields said a decision has not yet been made on which schools to close.
“Specific campuses were named. We haven't even had — we haven't even gone through the growth and planning process,” Fields said.
District administrators did reiterate Tuesday that they plan on recommending closing one middle school and two elementary schools. It will be up to the growth and planning committee to officially recommend which schools to close.
During a discussion of the current state of the district’s financial solvency plan, Deputy Superintendent Cecilia Davis said Tuesday that district administrators were looking to make $30 million in cuts to staff and programming, but they’re proposing to make the cuts over the course of two years in order to avoid layoffs.
“The reductions can be implemented through A: a formal reduction in force, through financial exigency. … But it is not administration's recommendation,” Davis said. “B is the staff recommendation, which is through attrition and reduction of positions, contract expirations, reduction of probationary contracts and non-renewal, and an additional 2 million from policy-based changes.”
However, Board President Monica Ryan said she was concerned about how low the fund balance would go if the cuts take two years.
“Doing this in two phases of two years, like you and Mr. Macias are advocating for, the board needs to understand that comes with a risk, and that risk is going to involve this district dropping to below 60 days of fund balance,” Ryan said, during a discussion on the board’s budget parameters. “In my mind, going below that 75 (day) threshold is extremely not responsible with the taxpayer’s money, right? That's what TEA has kind of set as the floor.”
A district's fund balance is roughly equivalent to a savings account. It is measured in the number of days of operating expenses held in reserve.
“No one's going to recommend that you go below 75, but no one's going to say that the wheels are literally coming off the wagon and the sky is falling if you do,” Fields replied.
“We're not trying to go below 75 with the recommended cuts that we have coming up for next year,” he added. “Those would take us down to about 57 days at the end of June 2027.”
Board trustees informally agreed to several budget parameters during the meeting, including avoiding an increase in class ratios, and keeping base pay and benefits at their current levels.
Another possible parameter discussed during the meeting was reducing the percent of revenue spent on payroll from about 91% to about 84% over the next two years.
In order to reduce the budget deficit while meeting those parameters, Davis said Judson would need to eliminate roughly 500 positions.
