Elyria Schools will present plan to cut $9 million in February

ELYRIA — Following a pair of failed levies and a mounting deficit, Elyria school district officials laid out their process and timeline for making about $9 million in cuts for the next school year. During an Elyria Board of Education meeting Wednesday, Superintendent Ann Schloss and Treasurer Colleen Aholt told the board that the basic outline of the cuts will be presented in a public meeting Feb. 4. District officials have said that $9 million is the approximate amount that needs to be cut as the district faces rising costs of everything from classroom materials to health care benefits, as well as losses of funding from the state itself and from an expansion of the homestead exemption by the county commissioners. In an attempt to avoid or limit cuts, the district brought two identical 10-year, 4.9-mill emergency operating levies to the voters in May when it lost narrowly and again in November, where it was defeated by a much larger margin. Following those defeats, Aholt said in a Nov. 19 board meeting that the district would need to cut $9 million to stay fiscally solvent and avoid coming under state supervision, or even control. Schloss said that due to the structure of the district's finances, a sizable portion of the cuts would have to come out of staffing. At Wednesday's meeting, Aholt said that the district was working on the structure of its "reduction plan," which would be due in February. This is sooner than was initially expected, but the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce moved up the due date for financial forecasts from May to February. Schloss said that since the levy failed in November, she had been meeting with department and building heads and was planning to meet with the Elyria Education Association next week. "(We are) listening to opinions and ideas for the reduction plan, and what we have been doing is putting things down, costing them out, seeing where we are at and talking to enough people," Schloss said. "Some of us have been through this, some of us have not, and (we are) just looking at what to include within the plan that makes sense." Schloss said after the meeting that it would be hard to tell how many layoffs the reduction plan would include for some time because the district is still awaiting retirements for next year. She said that the district has already seen 13 faculty put in for retirement after the current school year, which she said is higher than normal. "We are looking at working with the board in January," she said. "As you know we have retirements still coming in, which changes the picture every time one comes in. I am not sure everyone realizes the layered detail of licensure (and) because it is kind of a puzzle." Schloss said that the district will give a public presentation on Feb. 4 laying out the reduction plan and give specifics on cuts. She said she was not sure if a list of which teachers will actually be laid off would be ready at that time. "It is not as easy as it appears to go through all those layers," she said. "And also we want to be very intentional about how this is rolled out because, you know, it is never easy telling someone that they are being reduced or laid off. We want to make sure they don't find out any way other than us telling them, to see it on a list somewhere is not the right way to do that." The district will use feedback from the community after the Feb. 4 meeting to finalize cuts. School Board President Elaine Seguin said that she felt that by rejecting the levy twice the voters had made it clear they wanted the district to cut costs, and she appreciated how Schloss and Aholt were going about that. "I think that it is excellent that you are involving the community," Seguin said. "They have spoken via not passing the levies that they felt the need for this, so I think being transparent is a great idea." Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.