By KARI BLURTON
Hays Post
As local option budget election ballots hit Hays mailboxes this week, two USD 489 educators spoke with Hays Post about their hopes the LOB increase will pass — and their fears of what will happen if it does not.
“The bottom line is the district needs the financial support, and if we are going to provide the education we are used to — and our kids deserve — the money is going to have to be there,” said Carol Murray, USD 489 school psychologist.
“We are not talking about a large amount … but it may be enough to hire back teachers in a couple of critical areas,” Murray added.
The ballot asks voters to vote yes or no on raising the LOB from 30 percent to 31 percent — a move that would bring in approximately $200,000 to a district that has been dealing with a more than $1 million shortfall for 2014-15.
In an effort to balance the budget, the USD 489 Board of Education this spring voted for the non-renewal of 16 teaching contracts, a move that will result in larger class sizes in the district’s elementary schools.
The school board has said its “No. 1 priority” if the LOB is passed is to bring back some of the teachers whose contracts were not renewed for the 2014-15 school year, especially in “critical” elementary classrooms.
O’Loughlin Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Gina Johnson is one of the teachers who will be directly affected by cuts, as she will be teaching a section of fifth grade previously taught by three teachers. Those three classes will be combined into two unless there are changes.
Johnson said she is spending her summer figuring out how she is going to go from teaching 18 students to 28 — planning everything from the layout of her classroom to how she is going to meet the the individual needs of 10 more students.
“When you get to numbers of 28 or more, you’re just … trying to meet with everyone and not necessarily based on needs. It terrifies me that somebody could be lost, and I wouldn’t necessarily know it.”
Gina Johnson, O’Loughlin Elementary
“At 18 (students), it is so much easier to meet every single need in the classroom — from pulling a small group or working with a child individually,” she said. “When you get to numbers of 28 or more, you’re just … trying to meet with everyone and not necessarily based on needs.
“It terrifies me that somebody could be lost, and I wouldn’t necessarily know it,” Johnson said.
Murray agreed, noting she has consulted in classrooms with 26 to 28 students in the past.
“Behavior issues are compounded the more personalities there are in the classroom,” she said.
Murray and Johnson said the larger classrooms in elementary schools also will affect curriculum as teachers will not be able to move the students through the curriculum as far and as fast as they previously could.
Murray said if the LOB increase is rejected by voters, teachers in the district will “weather the storm,” but will be providing “just the basics.”
“It is going to be less than our best, and I don’t think that is good enough for our students,” Johnson said, adding both she and her husband looked into the education standards in Hays before deciding to move to Hays five years ago when her husband was offered the position as head baseball coach at Fort Hays State University.
“I was excited to move here. I was excited to teach here,” she said. “If we know we can do better and have better, why wouldn’t we do what needs to be done to maintain the level (of education) everyone has come to appreciate in Hays?”
Murray agreed, saying she did not want Hays to miss out on the next cancer specialist or business because families decided not to move to the community.
Murray added USD 489 has been working with the same amount of funds from the state since 2008-09.
“It is absurd to think the cost of living can go up, medical insurance can go up, and yet somehow (the district is) supposed to work at a lower income than we did in 2009,” she said. “The state has cut us tremendously.”
Murray spoke of the recent passage of HB-2056 by the Legislature, which settled a school-funding lawsuit and provided funds for poorer school districts — but ended up taking even more funds from school districts such as Hays.
Part of the school funding compromise offered options for school boards to make up for lost funding, through passage of a local option budget increase.
If the LOB increase is approved by voters, the legislative bill also provides the school board the option to raise the LOB to 32 percent or 33 percent for one year, after which the LOB will go back to 31 percent.
Those potential single-year increases would only require approval by the board and could only be made permanent by another election.
“The LOB (election) is a time for the community to take a stand and say ‘This is the kind of community we want Hays to be.’ ”
Carol Murray, USD 489 school psychologist
“The LOB (election) is a time for the community to take a stand and say ‘This is the kind of community we want Hays to be,’ ” Murray said. “By passing the LOB, we are putting a priority on the education of our kids. Either that, or we can just be at the whim of politicians who continue to take things away from us.”
Both teachers urged the community to educate themselves on how the LOB increase will affect their families before voting.
Johnson said when she looked at the amount raising the LOB from 30 to 31 percent would cost her family, it amounted to the “cost of two coffees a week.”
“I think everybody’s kids are worth that,” Johnson added.
The USD 489 website has more information on the LOB election HERE.