Superintendent Stone takes 4 percent pay cut

PALMER — With his district facing a $10 million budget shortfall, Mat-Su Borough Superintendent Gene Stone announced at Wednesday evening’s school board meeting that he would be taking a 4 percent pay cut, personally, and that he’d asked all district administrators to take a 2 percent cut.

“I think, given what our current budget challenges are, it was received well, and I think they appreciate that first step,” Stone said on Thursday. “It’s always difficult to ask employees to lead with that kind of example, but we all understand what the challenges are, and we haven’t received anything but support.”

The reduction in pay for top administrators won’t do much to fill the enormous budget hole and Stone didn’t do it for the kudos or good feeling. Far from that, it’s an indicator that big cuts are on the way to a 2017-18 budget, Stone will be delivering the preliminary version of to the board at the March 1 meeting.

“We have to find some efficiencies and cuts within the administration. I felt like everyone needs to demonstrate that nobody is going to be left untouched from this,” Stone said. “The message is we’re not trying to do any balancing of this budget on the backs of any one group. We’re just trying to find ways to minimize the impact by spreading it out through all groups.”

While some efficiencies can be found through other measures, Stone acknowledges most of the cuts will have to do with personnel.

“We haven’t committed to what all our issuances of contracts will be, but we can make some assumptions that 85 percent of our budget is human resources related, so if we’re going to get to $10 million we have to get some reduction in the workforce,” Stone said. “At this time we don’t have a targeted goal, but if we looked at shoring up the budget through increasing class size and reduction in teaching numbers, that would equate to anywhere from 70 teaching positions and possibly more.”

One type of efficiency that Stone said will be looked at closely is ‘blended models’ of education.

Stone said the district will be hosting an open house on Tuesday to show parents what some of these ‘blended models’ could look like.

“One is a split version where parents would have more access in terms of a more personalized learning approach where their kids would only attend four hours a day — one morning session and one in the afternoon,” Stone said. “Each teacher would see more kids during the day, and a lot of the core learning would happen with online support and it would be more project-based on site.”

Stone said the response from staff on the borough’s various campuses has been generally positive and understanding.

“There’s no district immune from this and people are definitely coming to grips with it,” Stone said. “The state’s not going to come up with any new money, so really, our borough is in a similar situation. I think, moving forward, we’re going to have to begin a new conversation of how can we locally support our schools and continue to be innovators and provide the best quality education so that we don’t have to compromise the type of education that’s available.”