Members of the Akron Board of Education approved $24 million in cuts Monday, agreeing to lay off more than 50 teachers and eliminating more than 200 other positions. At the same time, they delayed making a decision about asking voters to approve a pair of levies this fall.
The district’s fiscal reorganization and restructuring plan was approved in three parts. Board member Rene Molenaur voted against all three proposed cuts, while board member Bruce Alexander abstained from voting on the measures that would cut non-teachers and non-certified professionals. Those measures passed 5-1; a proposal that authorized a reduction in force for teachers was approved 6-1.
In addition to eliminating 77 substitute tutors who will not have their contracts renewed, the district will lose 121.5 positions to attrition and 82 to layoffs, with 52 teachers among them. An additional 4.5 positions will have their hours reduced.
“What we find happening in Akron is happening in schools big and small,” Superintendent Michael Robinson said, as a slideshow of headlines from other school districts’ planned budget cuts played on a screen behind him. “Everyone is enduring the same things that we are.”
Those things in Akron include falling enrollment, the end of federal pandemic relief dollars and a teachers’ contract that resulted in an additional $21 million in expenses, among other cost challenges.
The elimination of 121.5 positions through attrition, where unfilled positions will be cut, will save $11.7 million; the elimination of 159 positions through layoffs will save $11.8 million.
Akron teachers’ union protests outside
Before the school board meeting, more than 100 members of the Akron Education Association rallied in front of the school district’s Main Street headquarters, wearing blue AEA shirts and waving signs. Ann Merendino, a third grade teacher at Barber Community Learning Center, said she felt as though the administration had not been transparent regarding cuts, while Paula Gandy, a Kindergarten teacher at Crouse CLC, said she came to fight for justice and unity.
Grace Craig, an instructional coach at Findley CLC, said she learned last week she would be displaced from her building. She didn’t yet know where she would be placed and she received the notice too late to apply for a building transfer to her preferred school.
“I’m most upset about being taken out of the building I’ve been in for five years,” she said. “I’m pretty devastated about that.”
Nicole Frohnapfel, a consulting teacher based at Garfield CLC, said she learned her position had been eliminated. She’s been told she’ll have another job, but Frohnapfel said she was shocked that the district would be eliminating jobs like hers, which help support new teachers.
And with longer-term employees like Frohnapfel getting moved into other roles, it’s those newer teachers whose jobs will be among those cut. Jae Collins, a first-year English teacher at Buchtel CLC, said her entire team was notified they would be part of the reduction in force. Her students, upset when they learned the news, made a sign sharing their concerns that Collins and her mother, Findley CLC teacher Chandi Collins, brought to the rally.
“I love how Ms. Collins is patient and very understanding,” one student wrote, while another wrote, “She’s a great teacher and she treats us with respect.”
“I believe it is unfair for the actually good teachers that show they truly care,” yet another said.
Chanique Perry, a substitute tutor at Crouse CLC, is also among those whose contracts won’t be renewed. She said she’s training to be a certified intervention specialist and hopes to continue working in Akron but is worried that with the elimination of more than 70 tutors, students’ needs won’t be met.
“The need for tutors is so high, I didn’t think they’d get rid of it,” she said.
AEA accuses district of ‘union busting’
As part of the restructuring, the district intends to move 58 teachers who are working in the administration building back into classroom jobs. The layoffs will come when those more senior teachers displace others who have less tenure, by union rules.
AEA leadership accused the district of union busting by moving AEA members out of administrative roles. Pat Shipe, the president, said she believed the move was an unwarranted attack on the labor union.
“Simply put, it is an attempt at union busting and we will not remain silent,” Shipe said from the bed of a gray RAM truck, to a cheering crowd. “We will continue to question, we will continue to stand strong, we will continue to stand together in community.”
Robinson denied the accusation, saying he was a “strong believer in unions.”
“I don’t know anything about union busting; I had to ask what the term meant,” he said. “But no, we’re not.”
Steve Thompson, the district’s CFO and treasurer, said some of the administrative roles that had been held by teachers would need to be filled once they were vacated, but Robinson said he had directed the work to be distributed among remaining employees in the departments that were impacted.
Robinson said as a former teacher, he was “more sensitive” to making cuts than people might realize.
“I’m a teacher, I’m a teacher before anything else,” he said. “I’ve been through it my own self.”
Molenaur says questions were unanswered, votes ‘no’ as a result
The total impact of the reductions is just more than 6% of the district’s staff. Yamini Adkins, the executive director for human capital, said she understood the reductions affected not just the school district but “our entire Akron community.”
As board members discussed the administration’s proposal, tensions sometimes erupted. More than once, Board President Diana Autry pushed board member Rene Molenaur to ask her questions more quickly, or to limit them, saying there wasn’t time to go through an “encyclopedia” of questions. Molenaur said repeatedly that she had emailed a list of questions to the administration, but had not gotten answers.
“We cannot sit here and answer questions in perpetuity,” Autry said. “You’ve asked several.”
That, Molenaur said, is why she voted against the proposals.
“I didn’t have enough information,” she said after the meeting.
Carla Jackson, the board’s vice president, said the questions she and others had were relevant to the decisions they were making.
“This discussion is determining my vote,” she said.
And board member Barbara Sykes questioned why Molenaur had not gotten the responses she was seeking, imploring district leaders to respond to requests from elected officials in a “reasonable length of time” or tell them why they had not gotten answers. She said she hoped leaders could be patient with and kind to each other.
“It is important to give our members responses to the questions,” she said.
Levy proposal on hold, vote scheduled for May 28
The district also discussed the five-year financial plan, and the need for an operating levy to help sustain operations into the future. The vote, which has already been delayed for months, is now slated to take place at a special meeting next Tuesday, officials said. They did not say why a vote had been delayed.
Thompson, the CFO and treasurer, said the cuts that board members were deciding on were “the worst part of our job.” He said the district leadership understood that their decisions affected people’s lives.
Still, he said, leadership has a fiduciary responsibility to balance the budget and ensure the district is in a financially sound position going forward. Passing a levy will help with that, though Robinson said as the district’s population shrinks, additional cuts to align the number of teachers with the number of students may be necessary. In recent years, the student population has fallen as the number of teachers has increased.
“The reality is, we find ourselves in a difficult spot,” Thompson said. “If we act now, we can mitigate it to some degree.”
