No Layoffs Planned but Budget Woes Loom, Schools Chief MaryEllen Elia Tells Brandon Chamber Members

Superintendent of Schools MaryEllen Elia spoke at a Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce luncheon both about the budget “cliff" approaching and the stop-gap measures in place to lessen the hardships of expected legislative action affecting Hillsborough’s public school teachers and students.

“Good people in tough situations” is how Elia described her view of the work in Tallahassee, where this year’s budget deliberations are testament to the tough decisions that face legislators and government officials in the weeks and months ahead.

“People need to step back and think of the people they’re affecting with legislation,” Elia said. Legilators are "working under very difficult situations in a tough, tough financial time.”

How tough it becomes back home is up for speculation as Elia gave her assessment of the situation at the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce’s 2011 Education Update Breakfast, held April 11 at the Embassy Suites hotel on Palm River Road.

The budget, and the “cliff” that is approaching is of the greatest concern, Elia said, with a Hillsborough deficit of some $70 million to $80 million likely with upcoming legislative action that appears most likely to date.

The Florida Legislature is in session through May 6. On the school district’s Website, Elia has been posting “Superintendent’s Budget Updates 2011,” the latest of which is dated March 31.

“Yes, we have to be very frugal, but we’ve done a number of things that have put us in a position where we’ve been able to handle” things better than most, Elia said.

Still, she added “I will not tell you we will not be stumped and have to make clear-cut decisions about our budget."

The aim, though, is to avoid layoffs and other measures undertaken in school districts nationwide, “and even in Florida,” Elia said, including cuts in athletics, art, music and physical education.

“We are not in that position because we’ve made some tough decisions (before this budget cycle),” Elia said.

She noted $40 million in federal education jobs money not yet spent that can be applied against the deficit and the approximately $125 million in budget cuts that school officials have made since 2007.

Still, “there will be tough decisions to make this year,” Elia said, but “we truly believe we’re going to be able to weather this.”

Among other topics of discussion Elia answered questions about the recently adopted student academic calendar for 2011-12, which calls for an early release every Monday throughout the 2011-12 school year.

“Every week of the school year students will be getting off one hour early on Monday, so it’s consistent,” Hillsborough school’s spokeswoman Linda Cobbe said in an April 6 on the calendar’s April 5 adoption by the Hillsborough County School Board. “Having it every Monday and reducing early release to one hour should make it easier for parents to plan."

Cobbe noted that all schools will have after-school programs for the kids of parents who are “unable to pick up their children early or don’t have alternative care” to cover for the early release hour.

The cost of the after-school care to accommodate the early release hour is $5 and parent can use this care even if their children are not already enrolled in the after-school care program.

With earlier scheduling and budgeting constraints, “when we took away that extra planning period, particularly for our senior high school students, it was a big issue that they were losing  planning time,” Elia said.

Legislation was enacted that required all state school districts to start school no earlier than two weeks before Labor Day. The move helped sealed the School Board’s decision to ditch block scheduling in favor of six-period scheduling, which in turn meant students no longer could take their final semester exams before the winter holiday break.

“We were against legislation that required us to have school start no earlier than two weeks before Labor Day,” Elia said. “Our students told us (at the School Board’s annual student forum) multiple times to get the exams before the holiday so they could enjoy the holiday and not have to come back to cram for the exams."

Elia said a calendar committee, comprised of teacher, student, PTA and school district representation, considered in their decision to have a consistent day off and time that parents working two jobs and with kids in more than one school found it difficult to plan for early release days that were scattered throughout the school year.

Moreover, Elia said, “Mondays are days we will have some national holidays,” and schools will be closed for those holidays.