Cave Creek Unifed Budget is in Dire Straits: A Solution

The Arizona School Board Association has released an estimate of necessary cuts to next year's budget that each district will need to make. You can view the list here.  According the AZSBA Cave Creek Unified will need to cut $2.1M to meet the current state K-12 cuts and another $2.3M if the proposed 18% increase in the state sales tax does not pass.
Add on to this another $800,000 due to student losses and the K-3 override reduction, and we are looking at a $3M to $5M budget hole that must be closed.  Currently all of the administrations proposals to cut the budget COMBINED add up to $2.4M.  This includes no PE, Music, Art, computers, and the closure of Desert Arroyo. Clearly the administration is going to have to dig deeper.

Our solutions consists the following:

1. Consolidate all the schools into 2 campuses. STMS and HTES in the south.  DAMS, BMES, old BMES, and CSHS in the north. Close three schools, DWES, DSES, and LMES, and make all schools K-8 except Cactus Shadows. Use old BMES to ease overcrowding at the HS or use it for 7-9.  You can see more of this proposal here and view what the school utilization would look like after closing 3 schools.  This is likely a $1.2M savings and not one teacher needs to get laid off.  We would also realize some transportation savings.  Yes it is radical, but the alternative is worse.
2. Raise class sizes by 4 at K-8 level but to mitigate this implement an ability grouping in each grade level.  The higher ability groups would have more students in them, the lower levels less students. Just as a simple example students would be grouped into the following class sizes: Honors 40 per class. Highly performing 36 per class. Performing 30 per class. Under performing 28 per class.  Have parents sign a form understanding that to be in the honors track, you accept a higher student teacher ratio.
3. Speaking of transportation, expand the walk zone (if there even is a walk zone) to 2 miles. There are some bus routes at DWES that drop kids off 1000 feet from the school. Why!  The closure of 3 schools may mitigate some of this.  Savings unknown but > than 0.
4. Consolidate all school records information at the district office.  Certainly that spiffy new school management system we bought can allow for one or two people to manage all the schools from a central location.  We don't need a records secretary (currently 8 or 9 FTEs) at each of the schools for such a small district. Cut this to 3, 1.5 for K-8 and 1.5 for the HS and a savings of $200,000.
5. Fund a full time volunteer coordinator position. This person will be solely responsible for creating a database of parents who are more than willing to step up and help the schools in this time of need.  If a teacher needs some help, they call the volunteer coordinator who will send out an email blast asking for volunteers. No savings but it make the teacher's lives just a little bit better.
6. Remove all car allowances.  If someone needs to travel between schools, the district maintains a fleet of vehicles that can be used for this purpose. Since the state reimburses us for every mile driven we could even make money by doing this.  Savings at least $40,000.
7. Raise deductibles and premiums for employee family members.  No way to calculate the savings, but a the district taking on a 9% increase in health care costs is unacceptable.

Since we don't work in the district finance office we know our information is imperfect, but at least we are trying unlike the board (exception Ms. Clancy) which makes no effort to tackle tough decisions and gets spoon fed by the administration.  Let us know what you think and if we are way off base.

We won't touch on other sacrifices that we feel the administration (the cabinet) should make but they need to step up and put some skin in the game.