Teachers, parents voice concerns about proposed school budget cuts at Bastrop ISD

Aaron Sullivan
·3 min read
Keri Weathers, a Lost Pines Elementary second grade teacher, speaks at the Bastrop school board's meeting on April 16. The board is looking at budget cuts, including to early child literacy coaches. "Because of my literacy coach, we've survived," Weathers said. "And I mean treading water."
Keri Weathers, a Lost Pines Elementary second grade teacher, speaks at the Bastrop school board's meeting on April 16. The board is looking at budget cuts, including to early child literacy coaches. "Because of my literacy coach, we've survived," Weathers said. "And I mean treading water."

Teachers and parents shared concerns on Tuesday with the Bastrop school board about revisions to the district’s budget for the next academic year, which include cuts to gifted and talented programming, school social workers and early child literacy coaches.

Trustee Kellye Seekatz said the district is facing a “huge budget crisis” due to the expiration of federal emergency relief funds meant to address needs during the pandemic and the state Legislature’s inability to pass a school finance bill last session.

“Record high inflation” worsens these factors, said Dina Edgar, the district’s chief financial officer. The school board plans to approve the cuts in late June. School board President Ashley Mutschink said the cuts are the district’s solution to a problem that plagues every public school district in Texas.

“We were hopeful that we would receive new funding in this 88th legislative session on the heels of the (COVID-19) funds expiring, but it just didn’t happen,” Edgar said, adding that $3 million of the district's payroll came out of the federal COVID relief funds, called Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funds.

With the funding changes, the district faces a $7.8 million budget shortfall. Edgar said the district has asked its departments to reduce their budgets by 15% without reducing campus budgets. The district will reassign staff they hired with ESSER funds, including social workers and staff who provide multi-tiered systems of support, or MTSS, for students with behavioral issues.

These reassignments and cuts, along with many others, bring the district’s budget shortfall down to approximately $189,000.

“(When the district received ESSER funds), we designed the MTSS program in an effort to help support the classroom teacher,” said Superintendent Barry Edwards. “When we talk about reducing it and not affecting the classroom teacher … we’re not taking anything out of the classroom. We’re going to have just as many teachers.”

The district’s gifted and talented program and early literacy coaches also received funding from the expiring ESSER funds, the superintendent said. However, members of the Bastrop Federation of Teachers and their supporters urged the school board to find other programs to cut besides those currently funded through ESSER funds. Toni Malone, Emile Elementary’s gifted and talented teacher and the federation’s president, said these cuts will increase teachers’ workload.

“Our teachers are already overworked,” Malone said in an interview. “We rolled out a new curriculum this year which was very difficult and time demanding of our teachers. … On top of that, you have campus requirements and the responsibilities of teaching.”

Malone said the positions on the chopping block provide necessary support for classroom teachers district-wide.

Emily Dominguez, a bilingual teacher at Lost Pines Elementary and the federation’s secretary, said the proposed cuts will mainly affect the district’s elementary schools.

“The district is saying that its mission is to promote growth and students’ abilities and future success, but they’re taking the foundation away from these children,” Dominguez said in an interview. “The elementary is where they’re going to get the foundational skills that they can use in the upper grades. … It really seems like they’re setting themselves up for failure in the upper grades.”

Jennifer Blum, the counselor at Mina Elementary, said cutting social workers and MTSS will affect the district’s homeless population and students with severe behavioral problems.

“The homeless families are the ones who come to us in dire need,” Blum said in an interview. “They just want to put their babies in school.”

However, as a mother, Blum said the cuts would impact her oldest son, who uses the district’s gifted and talented programming. She said the program gives her son a place “to be quirky and be different” for a few hours each week.

“We eagerly await what the 89th Legislature will do, and we will advocate on behalf of the students of Bastrop ISD and all public schools,” a district spokesperson said in an email. “As we navigate these challenges, Bastrop ISD remains committed to providing the best education and services possible for our students.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Bastrop teachers, parents voice concerns about proposed budget cuts