For Fort Bend ISD, it was a first.
In the 2009-10 school year, after several years of cutting “extras” out of the budget, a $23 million budget deficit dictated that the district declare financial exigency and reduce its workforce for the first time. It wasn’t easy, particularly on employee morale, and the district made its share of missteps. But it did a very good job in some key areas and learned some lessons that can help other districts as they go through the process.
That fall, Tracy Hoke, the district’s chief financial officer, looked at PEIMS (Public Education Information Management System) data and concluded that there were some staffing issues that needed addressing. She arranged for TASB HR Services to conduct a staffing review to give district leaders some options to consider in the event that cuts would have to be made beyond eliminating positions through attrition.
The staffing review identified a total potential savings of more than $23 million through program changes, increased class sizes, reductions in overstaffed areas, staff reassignments, consistent allocation of staff in the master schedule at all secondary campuses, plus attrition and retirements. The district also studied other areas of the operating budget (transportation, maintenance and operations, construction, energy use) to find additional savings.
With all cost-saving strategies on the table, it was clear that the size of the district’s budget hole, combined with the staffing information, would require cutting personnel costs through a reduction in force (RIF).
Once the district knew it would have to lay employees off, the first issue that needed addressing was district Policy DFF (local) to determine if it needed to be updated. At the urging of Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Tim Jenney, the board approved an update to the policy that reshuffled the order of the criteria to be considered when determining which teachers would be laid off.
“A review of DFF (local) is critical because most districts give seniority the heaviest weight. We made performance the second criteria (after certification) based on each teacher’s most recent appraisal because the superintendent felt that if we had to lay people off, performance should be the top priority,” said Rhonda McWilliams, the district’s chief human resources officer.
Superintendent Jenney sent an email to all employees in March explaining how the criteria in the revised policy would be used to determine which teachers would be cut using secondary math teachers as an example. The district had to eliminate a set number of middle school and high school teaching positions districtwide (with principals weighing in on which disciplines could be cut). Teachers would then be considered for cuts if they (applied in the order that follows):
1. lacked the appropriate certification
2. were on a growth plan
3. had the lowest appraisal scores of those within their discipline
4. did not take part in professional development
5. had the least amount of service time in the district (seniority)
Regarding the district’s decision to move performance up on the list, Jenney said, “I think it was one of the most important features of the process. Being the senior person does not guarantee that you’re the most appropriate person for the job. We wanted the effectiveness of the teacher to be our primary consideration.”
The next step the district needed to take was to have the board declare that a financial exigency existed (i.e., a circumstance that results in a need to reduce financial expenditures for personnel). It was March by the time the Fort Bend’s board voted to approve a resolution declaring financial exigency, and that is much too late, according to McWilliams. “My department was put in a very challenging position because we were doing it so late… I was working 80 hours a week for several months because we started so late,” McWilliams said.
Hoke advises districts that may have to plan for a RIF to begin their process in October. “You don’t want to create morale issues but you’ve got to be looking at it internally early on,” Hoke said. Ideally, a board would update its DFF (local) policy before January and declare a financial exigency in January or February.
Also in February, the positions that need to be eliminated should be identified. In Fort Bend’s case, their staffing review showed that they were significantly overstaffed in special education by as much as 200 positions based on benchmark data from peer school districts. That reality dictated that the cuts would start with the district’s special education staff. Almost a third of the district’s cuts were special education teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, and diagnosticians.
The district also elected to increase the student-teacher ratio in its secondary schools so fewer teachers would be needed to handle the class loads.
McWilliams had the difficult task of identifying which positions and people would be subject to cuts. It’s critical to start with employees on Chapter 21 contracts because of the notification requirements: according to the contract terms, they must be notified that their contract is not being renewed 45 calendar days before the last day of instruction. Decisions about employees on other types of contracts (or no contracts) come next.
Overall, the district chose to reduce its staff by 463 positions (less than 5 percent of the district’s 9,500 full-time employees) to save $20 million. The layoff included 267 professional employees (including 206 classroom teachers, 79 of those being special education teachers) and 196 paraprofessional and auxiliary employees.
Once the tough decisions were made, the district faced another test: educating its own principals on the process. “We had 70 principals who didn’t want to do this and did not understand the RIF process,” McWilliams said. “I was a principal in my other life and I can tell you that our principals did not get that this was not a redistribution of staff but an actual layoff. It took quite a bit of training.”
McWilliams wrote and practiced with principals and supervisors a script she’d written to help them notify employees who were part of the RIF. Her advice to them was to remember that the district’s actions were not personal and to stick to business, addressing the issue directly and without blame or apologies. Employees were offered the chance to resign rather than go through the nonrenewal process.
It’s never easy to share bad news, but to its credit, the district didn’t try to hide the difficulty it was facing from staff or the community. Instead, leaders made a concerted effort to be up front about what was happening.
As early as January, Jenney sent an email—the first of many—to all employees addressing the district’s budget deficit (the messages were printed and provided to employees without access to the district’s email system). In early February, the district issued a press release explaining the budget deficit and the district’s actions in response to the community.
Early in March, the district added a “Budget Challenges” page to its Web Site to keep its staff and the community informed. The page included a comprehensive financial report, a list of frequently asked questions, a budget presentation and workshop schedule, plus a cost analysis and the results of the district’s staffing review. Jenney continued to email employees regularly to let them know the district’s plans. Those emails were added to the Web page.
“We knew it was critical to communicate accurate information to our staff and community quickly and consistently throughout the entire process to counter (as best we could) the many rumors and misinformation that would be circulating once everyone began to realize that we had very serious budget challenges,” said Fort Bend ISD Chief Communications Officer Mary Ann Simpson. “This was the first time…that we conducted a RIF and the tensions and emotions of our staff were high.”
And rumors did circulate. One that came the district’s way through the media was that the district was hiring foreign teachers at the same time it was laying teachers off. The district issued a press release to explain that it had hired a small number of teachers in past years on H1B visas to fill positions that no U.S. citizen was qualified or available to fill (typically foreign language or bilingual positions). The district hadn’t hired a foreign teacher in some time and said so to nip this rumor in the bud. Districts that go through a layoff should know up front that they will have to do some damage control as rumors circulate through the community.
The district’s direct and open communications strategy drew praise from employees, according to Simpson. “We received a lot of appreciative feedback from staff regarding these communications. People would rather know the news—even if it is not good—than live day to day with uncertainty and speculation,” Simpson observed. Jenney’s email’s in particular were appreciated. “Most of what I heard was, ‘We may or may not agree with you, but we appreciate knowing,’” Jenney said.
At Jenney’s direction, the district hired back most of the employees it laid off as others resigned or retired. The district again focused on performance by rehiring employees with the strongest appraisals among the terminated group. In the end, just 59 professional employees were not hired back (more than 200 were). About a third of the district’s paraprofessional employees got their jobs back. It was an important gesture on the district’s part and improved the morale of the remaining employees.
Still, Jenney might not do it all over in the same way. “When we reached the date when we said we would open positions up for outside hires I made a decision that we would continue to try to place people who were laid off,” Jenney said. “I’m not sure I would do it that way again. It was the right decision to make at the time, but I probably wouldn’t do it again because our intent would be to be even more focused on keeping the right people employed.”
With such a large number of special education cuts, there was no easy way for the district’s special education employees to pick up where they left off and the district wasn’t prepared to provide a plan for the future. “If we had to do it over again, one thing we’d do is make sure to have a better plan in place for special education reductions,” Hoke said. “We’re still dealing with issues that came up as a result of inadequate planning for cuts in that area,” McWilliams added.
Overall, though, most employees seem to have recovered. McWilliams gives the district decent marks for delivering the bad news with care and notes that while employee morale was low for awhile, when school started in August, employees came back happy to have their jobs and ready to move forward.
McWilliams said the district learned four important things in the process:
