Some Grand Forks School Board members reconsider goal behind staff cuts

Mar. 25—GRAND FORKS — With school district administrators continuing to hold conversations with teachers and staff whose programs face cuts next year, some Grand Forks School Board members on Monday suggested the district reconsider its cost-cutting goals.

Superintendent Terry Brenner and his top staff have been holding meetings with affected teachers and other employees since the

district announced plans to cut the equivalent of dozens of staff positions

in the 2024-25 school year as a cost-saving measure.

The district has faced considerable blowback from students, parents and former district teachers who oppose the cuts, particularly to the music and German programs. They've made their case

at School Board meetings, before city and county officials

and in hundreds of emails to district officials and School Board members.

Public comment was excluded due to time constraints at Monday's board meeting, but some members had picked up the tune.

"I think the question is, do we want to maintain our standard or do we want to decrease some standards?" board member Cynthia Shabb asked. "We have a very excellent music program. You can see it on stage, you can see it in performances. Will that stay the same if we take away some of these (teachers)?"

Shabb suggested the School Board consider pushing back its plan to restore its general fund reserves to 15% of operating expenses by 2026, a goal that helped drive administrators to pursue a $7.3 million "budget realignment," about half of which would come out of staff salaries and benefits.

Board member Monte Gaukler backed this idea, comparing the district's investment in music and language programs to Grand Forks' "gold standard" high school hockey teams that battled each other for the state crown last month.

"If you look at the Big Five (school districts) in North Dakota, they all have three languages," Gaukler said. "I understand we need to save $3 million. But can we move that number out? Can we move that number out and not worry about $7 million and just worry about $4 million?"

Board member Bill Palmiscno, who was the first member to suggest reconsidering the reserves goal at the board's Feb. 26 meeting, said administrators should first meet with other groups expecting to be affected, like elementary school teachers, and that the decision over where to cut should remain administrators' purview.

Grand Forks Education Association President Melissa Buchhop also indicated she favors reconsidering the 15% goal.

Administrators, for their part, have stayed mum about whether they're reconsidering some of the originally proposed staff cuts.

Brenner, Associate Superintendent Catherine Gillach and Assistant Superintendent Matt Bakke have held multiple "listening sessions" with middle and high school music teachers, high school German teachers, and library media specialists and paraprofessionals since Feb. 26, but have so far declined to say if or how many of the originally recommended cuts will go through.

"Everyone in the room would like to hear the recommendations, but we're just not ready to do that," Brenner said.

Contract renewals for teachers and other certified employees usually go out on March 1, but these have been delayed.

At least one certified staff member who has filed their resignation since February cited the elimination of their position as cause, though Brenner has said the cuts were meant to eliminate positions through attrition and provide alternative employment options within the district.

Gillach also confirmed a staff member employed as an addiction counselor had left the district after the district planned to cut its share of funding for the program next year (half of it was paid via federal grant), leaving that position open.

Asked whether more staff had cited the proposed cuts in their resignations, Brenner responded, "not yet."

Board President Amber Flynn pushed back against reconsidering the 15% goal, pointing out it had come out of a period of dire financial straits for the district that predated many board members.

"It's really scary for me to look back and to understand at a deeper level that we only had two weeks of savings in our checking account. Not a lot of people know that," Flynn said.

She said she'd be more supportive of pushing back the reserves plan, but doesn't want to see the district backtrack on the goals it had set in its strategic plan.

"Music appears in our strategic plan one time, and that is in the position name of someone," she said. "But that strategic plan was not done in secret. It was not done without community input, it was not done without teacher input.

"If we really care about certain things, then our actions and our words have to match."