San Francisco School Superintendent Maria Su will unveil a bold and deep set of proposed cuts of central office administrators and staff at next week’s school board meeting. Su’s reorganization plan eliminates 205 positions and reduces costs by $34 million, almost one-third of the budget cut needed to stave off state takeover of the school district in July.
Currently, the public version of the Su Plan consists of two pages of goals and two pages of charts. Almost half of the cuts come from three divisions: curriculum and instruction; student and family services; and special education.
While buy-in and support of the school board, parents, educators, and the larger community are essential for the plan to succeed and may ultimately come, it is unclear how that will develop. According to Su’s March 28 memo to the school board, presenting the plan, publishing the final organizational chart and job descriptions, and beginning the implementation phase are all scheduled for April 22.
Buy-in and support of the school board, parents, educators, and the larger community are essential for the plan to succeed.
In the past, the school district has moved quickly and made missteps such as adopting a unique payroll system without adequate parallel testing, which had to be abandoned at tremendous stress to employees and cost to the district. Here are five questions that should be addressed to the satisfaction of the school board, educators, and school communities before adopting or implementing the Su Plan.
How much of the Su Plan is driven by the fiscal crisis and how much by good management?
There is a consensus that the school district must cut costs and there are widespread calls to “cut from the top.” If Su has evaluated the capacity and performance of central office administrators and staff during her six months at 555 Franklin Street and concluded the work can get done without them, supporting the Su Plan is an easy call. But if the cuts are necessitated by the fiscal crisis, school stakeholders need to be warned they will have to get by with fewer services or less assistance, just like they are having to deal with at school sites with fewer teachers, assistant principals, counselors, social workers, nurses, and other staff.
What is the impact on students and families?
The first two guiding principles of the Su Plan are “Focus on Students Outcomes” and “Family and Community Well-Being.” The plan eliminates 56 curriculum and instruction positions, 35 student and family services positions, and nine positions from special education. It is important to know how many positions remain in these areas and how the continuing staff members are supposed to carry out the important work of fulfilling these goals.
How does the Su Plan address long standing school district management challenges?
Beyond the payroll system, the state Fiscal Crisis Management and Assistance Team (FCMAT) has criticized financial and other management capacities of the central office and noted recent improvement. The Su Plan cuts 44 positions from technology, human resources and labor, and business services. The Su Plan also states that it is intended to reorganize and merge programs and services but does not state whether, and, if so, which offices or divisions will be eliminated. Specifying what management impacts and improvements are expected as a result of implementing the Su Plan will be an important selling point.
Does the Su Plan actually save $34 million?
The school board, families, educators, and taxpayers would be well served by further detail on whether the Su Plan actually saves $34 million in general fund expenditures; whether some positions to be cut are federally funded; whether some employees take their salaries back to the classroom; whether eliminating vacant positions counts as savings, and how much of the savings is reduced by buying out the contracts of eliminated employees.
How does the Su Plan’s contribution to financial savings compare to the school site cuts?
Sharing alternative models of central office reorganization that Su considered might strengthen the acceptance of this plan. Some stakeholders may feel more staff can be cut while others may feel too much is being proposed. Su can demonstrate that the central office is doing “its fair share” by showing how the savings contribute to the overall $113 million in reductions that the school district must approve and that cutting even more positions would jeopardize educational and institutional functions.
Simply by the nature of their downtown location and bureaucratic positions, central office administrators and staff generally do not engender the affinities that students and parents devote to classroom teachers. Nor are they likely to attract PTA dollars to save their positions. Thus, their positions are vulnerable to cutting. Nonetheless, information sharing and addressing these questions now will enhance support for the Su Plan, foster a future sense of shared success if it works. and reduce the prospect of finger pointing and blame if it does not.
