Tucson Unified School District is cutting administrative spending by 5% to save the jobs of COVID-relief-funded counselors, social workers and instructional coaches.
The reallocation of cuts from central administrative departments will put $1.5 million towards keeping 21.6 full-time-equivalent positions for counselors and social workers.
The federal pandemic relief funding expires in September. In recent months the district proposed and abandoned a couple of previous budget-cutting ideas as it tries to save jobs funded by that money.
For now, TUSD officials still aren’t sure how they’ll find the money to save 62.5 full-time-equivalent positions of other learning recovery specialists hired in response to pandemic-era learning loss.
Each central administrative department is charged with determining how best to implement the 5% cut.
“Whether it impacts positions or not, that ultimately is going to be dependent on a department-by-department basis,” TUSD finance chief Ricky Hernandez told the district Governing Board Tuesday night. The board unanimously approved the plan.
“These are not teachers — these are not any support staff or paraprofessionals in the schools,” Hernandez said of administrative positions.
Governing board member Dr. Ravi Shah apologized to the affected departments, saying, “I want to thank everyone for really making the sacrifices that we that we need … to then be able to fund some of these positions that are working directly with students.”
Previously TUSD suggested cutting assistant principal jobs in order to save classroom jobs whose pandemic relief funding is expiring, but the board deferred voting on that earlier this month.
Additionally, $2.8 million of the district’s school nurse salaries and benefits will be moved to the district’s Medicaid reimbursement budget in order to support certain facilitators paid with pandemic relief funds.
These multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) facilitators act as academic coaches and strategists. TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo called them “the stopgap that prevents some of our most vulnerable students from falling through the cracks.”
“They’re convening teams, calling parents, putting plans together coordinating resources, to make sure that our students not just survive academically and socially, but thrive,” Trujillo said.
The nurses’ salaries and benefits will be moved from the maintenance and operations budget to be covered by reimbursement from Medicaid in Public Schools, a federal program that reimburses schools for medically necessary school-based services.
Thirty-eight of TUSD’s schools utilize MTSS professionals.
A proposed reallocation of desegregation funds in an effort to keep COVID relief-funded math and reading interventionist positions is still up for debate.
The Governing Board is holding off on making a decision, as TUSD must conduct a performance impact analysis to move desegregation funds. That process will assess the most effective use of desegregation expenditure reductions and allocations.
Trujillo said the analysis will “describe in detail any potential consequences or ramifications to integration or academic achievement that could occur because of change.”
There are 62.5 FTE interventionists in question, totaling $3.5 million in staffing costs.
A public information session and forum will be scheduled to share the analysis’s findings, likely after the district’s spring break.
Pandemic relief funding came in multiple rounds. The current, and final, package in question is ESSER III. Those funds expire in September.
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