2020-21 Hillsborough School Budget Approved: What’s in it?
It’s that time of year again; the Hillsborough School District has developed and approved their budget for the 2020-2021 school year. On April 27, 2020, School Business Administrator Aiman Mahmoud presented the final budget to the Board of Education at their virtual meeting, which was done online and livestreamed on YouTube to the public that evening due to the coronavirus.
The most intriguing thing about the budget is that the district is losing state aid again but is cutting no positions like what happened in last year’s budget, when 56 positions were eliminated, leading to a number of teachers and other staff losing their jobs or being transferred into different teaching positions. So as odd as it sounds, the recovery process from last year’s cuts will begin as the hole continues to grow deeper. A large reason this was able to happen was because of savings in healthcare.
The new staff positions that will be added in the budget include one clerk position that will have someone split time between the Board office and Transportation office. A position in each office was cut in the last budget which resulted in inefficiencies, making it a priority to get a position there re-added. There will also be two new teaching positions in the budget for the purpose of decreasing class sizes. Mahmoud stated that the grade level or content area they will be for has yet to be determined. It was reiterated that the most important goal when crafting the budget was to not let any people go as was the case in the 2019-20 budget.
All teaching staff will get new laptops next year. Mahmoud stated that “In order to do so in our technology plan, we are refreshing our staff devices.” Under this plan, students and staff have their computers for a cycle of four years. This year is the fourth and final year for teachers with their ThinkPad laptops. The laptops that they will have starting next year (and presumably through 2024) will be the third set of laptops for the teachers, having received their first ones in 2012, which were replaced by their second and current ones in 2016.
The Epson projectors that will be replaced are in the elementary schools, Auten Road, and the Middle School (K-8), and have been in those classrooms for nearly a decade. “Those projectors have been there a long time. They’ve extended their useful life, and in order to fix those and find supplies and materials, it’s unbelievably costly and we just don’t have a vendor that can do that for us,” Mahmoud stated.
One of the items in the budget that stuck out to board members was the elimination of the TP program.
Each April, all Kindergarten students take an in-person placement test that determines if they will need to go to TP before 1st grade. The test could not be offered this year due to the coronavirus.
At one time, there was a TP class in every elementary school. Only one section of it was offered this year, with two last year, three the year before, and four the year before that. Class sizes were very small when there was a TP class in all six elementary schools, which prompted the district to eliminate sections of the program during the years of budget cuts or if there was a need for different staff positions which necessitated the elimination of other positions (such as for TP) in the district.
“The fate of the TP program has been discussed since at least 2008-2009. It has been fading out over several years,” Board member and Education Committee chair Judy Haas said. “We’ve had a lot of kids who qualified for TP who were not interested in going if they had to go to a different school” (for 1 year and then return to the elementary school closest to them for 1st grade). “The level of interest in the program has declined and the needs of the students have been met in other manners.”
Board member John Oliver said that two of his three children went through the TP program and benefited from it, but said that he was “going to rely on the experts to tell me that the demand really isn’t there for the program.”
One item that did outrage a number of people in last year’s budget cuts which was not added back in this year’s budget was courtesy busing at the High School and Middle School. After the elimination of a few bus routes for both schools in the 2019-20 budget, more students had to walk to school. These were essentially the bus routes that were closest to each school that did receive busing. Although state law did not require students living that close of a distance to receive busing, the district had always provided it to them until last year.
Also in the transportation area, the district is purchasing five full-size buses for next year. Mahmoud said that “We really have gotten to the point where we are losing control of some of the contractors who are not delivering our students on time. As you know, we purchased three buses last year and we continue to go down that route to make our transportation as efficient as possible.” Don’t be surprised to notice more buses that say “Hillsborough Board of Education” on the roads in town next school year.
When the tentative budget was presented at the March 16th BOE meeting, Board President Dr. Lorraine Soisson stated that “We need around 100 substitutes a day and we have often times about a 70% fill rate, and so when that happens, other teachers are asked to fill those classes which is both taxing on our teachers and more costly.” Neighboring districts are paying their substitutes more, which she stated has made some people who live in Hillsborough sub in those districts to get paid more. Additionally, a handful of subs are Hillsborough alumni who are juniors and seniors in college and are only available to sub during their winter break or at the end of the year when their spring semester is finished. The Human Resources committee recommended it be increased from its present $90 per day rate to $105, which presumably is what will be the case starting next year.
After some discussion between board members following the presentation, the budget was approved 8-1 with all members voting “yes”, except for Jean Trujillo, who abstained after expressing concern about the lack of input from the public on TP being eliminated during this year’s budget process.