Kindergarten cuts might not be coming to Harrisburg after all.
Members of the Harrisburg School District administration unveiled a new budget proposal tonight that would preserve the full-day kindergarten program in favor of cutting 31 district employees. The proposal calls for eliminating nine administrators, 11 teachers, and 11 AFSCME union members for a total of $2.132 million in savings, which would narrow the district’s deficit to $4 million.
The budget still calls for maximum tax hikes for the next three years.
District business manager Bilal Hasan said that over-hiring has contributed to the district’s annual deficits, which are projected to deplete the district’s fund balance by 2020. Thirty-seven teachers who have been hired since 2016 took positions that were not in the district budget, Hasan said.
Interim CFO Jim Snell explained that salaries alone don’t account for the district’s high expenses. Costs like healthcare benefits and pension payments only emerged in long-term budgeting projections, he said.
“When you start to look at the reality of recurring costs over multiple years, that’s when you appreciate the true consequence of those decisions,” Snell said. “Some of those consequences are starting to get in the way and cause financial challenges for us.”
Budget and finance chair Ellis Roy was incredulous when Hasan confirmed the extent of the over-hiring.
“You’re telling me we hired 37 people we had no money to pay for?” Roy said. “We’re self-destructing here.”
Hasan said that the district has not had a position control mechanism in place to monitor its total number of staff positions and vacancies. The administration has implemented a new policy so that no position can be added to the payroll unless it is approved and included in the budget, he said.
Hasan and Snell said that developing a position control program is a lengthy and tedious process that requires collaboration between the district’s human resources, IT and business departments. Employees must code each permanent position with a unique identification number, which can be difficult in a large organization with high turnover, Snell said.
“At any point in time there are staff coming and going, so there was a never a snapshot that said ‘at this moment in time, these are all our positions,’” he said.
The district’s mistake, Snell explained, was anticipating expenditures in line with previous years without accounting for vacant positions that the district wanted to fill. When the administration ramped up its recruiting efforts and hired dozens of new teachers at the beginning of this school year, it unwittingly took on employees that were not included in the budget.
The implementation of a position control system was one of the initiatives outlined in the district’s state-mandated recovery plan, which it adopted in 2013. The task ultimately fell to Hasan, who began developing the program in August 2017 and oversaw its implementation earlier this year.
“This will provide structure and order, and that was not always the case when we were hiring,” Snell said.
The board’s Budget, Finance and Facilities Committee will reconvene next Monday, May 14, at 5:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Administration Building.
