JOPLIN, Mo. — The Joplin School District will use a mixture of layoffs, vacancies and a reduction in capital spending to weather cuts in state funding, the superintendent said Tuesday.

Superintendent C.J. Huff said the measures are aimed at keeping “cuts as far away from the kids as possible” with a state budget crunch looming. Joplin school officials are looking to cut a total of $2.3 million out of the operating budget for next fiscal year, which starts July 1.

The operating budget for the current fiscal year is about $65 million, officials said. The school board has not yet approved next year’s budget but is expected to do so in June, Huff said.

“We’re trying to cut as deep as we can now so we are prepared for” the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2011, Huff said.

Eight layoffs

Huff said the district plans to reduce its teaching rolls by 14.5 positions, largely at the elementary school level and spread through the different elementary school buildings. Eight of those 14.5 will consist of layoffs, while the balance will come from leaving positions unfilled, Huff said.

Those reductions will save the district about $755,000 and will be in place for the school year that starts in August. They also will be the extent of personnel cuts at the teaching level, Huff said.

The class size range at the various elementary schools will go from between 15 and 31 to between 16 and 31 next year, Huff said.

Administrators

The district also is looking to go leaner at the administrative level by leaving a number of positions unfilled.

The district’s chief information officer position, which is to be vacant with Angela Neria leaving this week to take a position at Pittsburg (Kan.) State University, will not be filled. The duties of that position will be absorbed by the district’s director of data processing.

Two assistant superintendent positions — one for educational operations and one for support services — also will go unfilled, Huff said. The two current occupants of those positions, Stephen Doerr and Doug Domer, are retiring at the end of the current school year.

Huff said the district will be hiring a human resources director to handle a portion of the duties from those two positions, while the remaining duties will be reallocated among the existing staff.

The district also will continue operating with only one attendance secretary at the middle-school level, and that person will continue operating out of the district’s central office. The district previously had three attendance secretary positions for the middle schools; two of those positions have been vacant and will remain so.

“This is the first of a couple of phases of significant reductions at the administrative level,” Huff said of the vacancies in the positions of attendance secretaries, chief information officer and assistant superintendents.

He said the district is still devising the second phase and that he could not yet elaborate. He said he expects that once both phases are complete, the savings to the district should exceed $400,000.

Also, the district will be eliminating an adult education coordinator and a special services coordinator at Franklin Technology Center via layoffs, Huff said. Savings information for those two positions was unavailable.

Purchases

Huff said the district plans to reduce capital expenditures — such as the replacement of buses and computers — by about $1 million.

Randy Steele, president of the Board of Education, echoed Huff’s comments that the cuts are aimed at minimizing direct impact to students.

“It boils down to the point that we’re going to give our kids the best education every day,” he said. “We’re going to continue to be accredited with distinction. For students and parents, they won’t see the changes in the classroom, but over the long run the way we’ve reorganized will benefit us.”

Staff writer Greg Grisolano and the Associated Press contributed to this report.





State budget



Missouri state budget negotiators on Monday night agreed on a roughly $23 billion spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1 that would cut education funding and reduce the state payroll. But Gov. Jay Nixon has warned that he may have to cut even further to align the budget with declining state revenues. Public schools across the state are already bracing for even deeper cuts for the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2011.