Saturday, March 18, 2000
Fairfield schools mull staffing
Higher quality has price tag
BY SUE KIESEWETTER
Enquirer Contributor
FAIRFIELD - A proposal to add 60 employees to the Fairfield City Schools staff would cost the district more than $3.1 million to implement if they were hired for the next school year.
That plan, educators say, would provide enough staffing to help move the district from its Ohio Report Card status of a “continuously improving district” to the top level of “effective,” a status that fewer than 30 of Ohio's 611 districts have attained.
But Fairfield Board of Education members aren't sure whether the community would be willing to pay for that all at once or would prefer that staffing be added gradually over two or three years.
That's why board members have asked Treasurer Stephen Maag to prepare several spreadsheets for review at the board's April 6 meeting. Each would show the effect of staffing on the budget if hiring were spread over more than one year.
“We can keep at the same level, never moving out of continuous improvement or we can improve,” said Kay Crain, president of the Fairfield Board of Education, during a discussion at Thursday's board meeting. “We know we can't add 60 at one time, but maybe phase them in.”
Hiring the 60 individuals, as proposed by the district's top administrators last month, would allow class sizes to drop in grades one through five, provide additional enrichment for gifted students, give more intervention to students having difficulty passing proficiency tests, and add technicians to help maintain the district's 1,500 computers.
“We need to take the next step, and the community has to help,” Superintendent Charles Wiedenmann said.
But doing so would mean the board may have to put an operating levy on the ballot a year sooner than expected, Mr. Maag said. Projections show that by adding 60 people for the upcoming school year, the district would face a slightly more than $2 million deficit in June 2002, Mr. Maag said.
Adding only the teachers already budgeted for growth for next year would push back a projected deficit to June 2003. That deficit is projected at $1.8 million, Mr. Maag said.
In the last eight years, Fairfield schools have raised residents' school taxes by 2 mills, compared with 22.3 mills between 1982 and 1992, Mr. Wiedenmann said.
During the last eight years, the district added three buildings it is now staffing. The board approved the purchase of the former Southern Ohio College and converted it into the Fairfield Kindergarten Center; it also built the new high school and East Elementary School.
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