EWEN — Ewen Trout Creek Consolidated School District’s board of education decided Wednesday night to withdraw pink slips it issued in late March.
“The board voted to rescind all pink slips,” District Superintendent Cathy Shamion said.
The board had issued pink slips to 16 teachers March 26. Shamion said the decision was made in the interest of maintaining student numbers.
“They felt that they didn’t want to diminish our academic program in any way,” Shamion said. “They felt that to make the cuts would cost us students as we decrease our program offerings so rather than do that they opted to keep our programs as intact as possible and keep our staff.”
Shamion reported two staff members, an industrial arts instructor and an elementary special education teacher, accepted retirement incentive offers from the district. She said the special education teacher will be replaced with a half-time position and the board will discuss later what to do with industrial arts, including consideration of creating a shared position with another district.
The buyouts will save the district approximately $75,000, Shamion said, qualifying the statement as a rough estimate.
“It’s truly an approximation,” she said.
It’s also far short of covering the $1.3 million budget deficit the district is trying to eliminate under a mandate from the Michigan Department of Education.
Shamion said the board is considering other cost-saving options, such as a restructuring of the district’s bus routes, and ways of increasing revenues, such as conducting fundraisers through school booster organizations.
Neighboring district Ontonagon Area School District’s board of education approved layoffs affecting seven teachers at a special meeting April 10. Two full-time teachers were cut at Ontonagon Elementary School, two at Ontonagon Junior-Senior High School, and three teachers at the high school had their hours reduced to one-third time.
District Superintendent Matt Lukshaitis cited declining enrollment as the reason for the cutbacks.
“It’s regrettable but we have lost 70 students in the last year and a half and we’re anticipating in the fall of ‘08 we’ll be starting the school year with 505 kids, which is a loss of 91 students over two years,” Lukshaitis said.
He said the cuts will not affect programming at the elementary school, but will result in the loss of elective courses at the high school. He said wood shop and some pre-vocational courses will be lost; junior high physical education will be cut in whole or in part.
Lukshaitis said the number of the staffing cuts may change depending on how many people accept voluntary severance packages the district has offered to 13 staff members.
At a meeting in March, the board voted not to renew the contract of elementary school principal Dan Vaara. His contract expires June 30, 2009.
Lukshaitis said if the district’s bond issue is approved in next Tuesday’s election, moving the elementary to a proposed new wing on the junior-senior high school building, all of the district’s classrooms would be in one building, easing the transition to a single principal for the district.
Dan Schneider can be reached at dschneider@mininggazette.com
