Akron Public Schools will miss the state-mandated deadline to submit its five-year budget forecast after failing to call for a vote in Monday’s meeting.
The delay comes after lengthy exchanges that spanned multiple meetings where board members pressed the district’s leaders for details about district-wide cuts the board asked for in the forecast. Board President Diana Autry said they would pick the issue up in the Dec. 9 board meeting.
“Yes, it is past the deadline, but we do have a window [where] we can remedy the late submission, or the nonsubmission at this time,” she said.
If the district misses the mandatory deadline, the state could enter it into financial caution, according to a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. The state grants districts 10 business days to submit their forecasts after the state has issued the district a notice.
“If during this interim period the board approves and submits the missing forecast and provided the forecast does not show a general fund balance deficit in FY25, this would result in the district being able to avoid the fiscal caution declaration,” the spokesperson said in an email.
A five-year forecast is a financial report the state requires school districts to submit in November and May each year. It’s used to assess the financial health of the school district.
Sykes: Transparency outweighs potential penalties
At the heart of the delay for some board members are issues with transparency and a lack of details from the administration about more than $14 million in cuts the members asked for.
For Board Member Barbara Sykes, the benefit of additional transparency from the administration outweighs any potential penalties from the state. Sykes said it’s the board’s responsibility to the district’s voters, who recently passed the system’s first levy in 12 years, to ensure the administration is providing detailed information and the board knows what it’s voting on, with a full understanding of the impact of its decisions.
“The issue is that you’re actually asking us to vote on something whereby we have not actually seen where these reductions are coming from,” Sykes said Monday night.
The administration presented a plan that includes the following reductions:
- $1.79 million from the Division of Academics
- $1.1 million from the Division of Student Services
- $4.8 million from the Division of Schools and Accountability
- $85,000 from the Division of Talent and Organization
- $2.39 million from the Division of Operations
At the board meeting Monday night, Sykes requested the five-year forecast be discussed in executive session due to the sensitivity of personnel reductions expected to be included in the cuts.
“I weigh the consequences of both,” Sykes told Signal Akron on Tuesday. “I am very respectful of both, and so the decision that I made was not made lightly. This is an important position, this is an important decision that was made.”
Board members want more details about cuts
Later in the meeting, before the board moved into executive session, Director of Labor Relations Mike Defibaugh told members they couldn’t speak in executive session about broad reductions to unionized staff without the administration first talking with those unions. Monday’s executive session was not focused on the cuts, according to several board members.
Monday evening, Sykes was joined by newly appointed Board Member Gregory Harrison in calling out the administration for not including enough details in its plan to cut $10 million from five departments before the next fiscal year and an additional $4.5 million across the life of the five-year forecast.
“The vote wasn’t taken because we didn’t have details of the cuts,” Harrison told Signal Akron on Tuesday.
He echoed Sykes in emphasizing the board’s mandate to ensure fiscal accountability and cited the $24 million in cuts last year that included 52 teacher positions — most of that spending has been slowly added back into the budget.
He said the district must avoid falling into a pattern of spending without knowing how to pay for it. The push for public financial oversight is part of an effort by some board members to ensure the public clearly knows what decisions the board is making and how the district is operating.
“These are the pains you go through when you’re adjusting a system to do what it’s supposed to do,” Harrison said.
Molenaur consistently asks for more details
Bruce Alexander, the longest-serving member of the board (he was elected in 2009), said he was unsure of any potential consequences from missing the deadline because he had never seen it happen. Most other school districts meet five-year forecast deadlines, he said.
Alexander acknowledged that it’s the board’s right to have detailed information about financial plans but said that he was comfortable with the plan the administration presented Monday.
“For me, when they talk about the cuts, just seeing the numbers, the dollars, was OK with me,” he said.
Board Member Rene Molenaur consistently joins board efforts to get more information from the administration for matters large and small. On Monday, in addition to asking when the administration would present the board with detailed information about the $14 million in cuts it was proposing, she questioned two individual personnel recommendations on the agenda. Neither passed.
“I don’t want to even give the impression that I am approving cuts that I know nothing about,” she said. “… When that happens, and when there are cuts, I don’t want to be told: ‘You approved it.’”
On Monday, Superintendent Michael Robinson said there wasn’t enough time in between when members of the Finance and Capital Management Committee requested more details about the potential cuts on Nov. 18 and when the board was scheduled to vote on it this week.
“This is certainly not the way I would want to do this,” Robinson said Monday night. “I would like to be able to give you everything at once … so you know what you’re voting for.”
