Cave Creek Unified wants your budget ideas. We make

According to this article CCUSD wants your budget ideas.  Just attend tomorrow’s board meeting to express them.

Cave Creek schools seek ideas for cutting budget

Here are our suggestions:

1. Expand the calendar to 200 days.  This will result in a 5% increase in budget (BSL) from the state.  Remove the professional development and conference days, about 10, so only 10 days will need to be added to the calendar.
2. 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. Operate the south and north schools as one, for example HTES and STMS could act as one campus and allocate room accordingly (maybe HTES is the lower school K-4 and STMS is an upper school 5-8), same with BMES and DAMS. This is likely a $1.2M savings and not one teacher needs to get laid off and we would also realize some transportation savings.
3. Raise class sizes by 3-4 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.
4. Expand the walk zone around schools. There are some bus routes at DWES that drop kids off 1000 feet from the school. Why?
5. 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 7 or 8 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.
6. 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. Principal needs some temporary help, the volunteer coordinator could find a volunteer instead of paying a temp or substitute.
7. 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. Savings at least $40,000.
8. Raise deductibles and premiums for employee family members and eliminate paying 100% of the cost of health care for administrator’s family members.
9. Eliminate health care subsidies for part time employees. No private employer gives part time employees free health care.
10. Raise fees for groups using district fields and gyms to fully cover the utility usage. Who is paying the electricity costs for the lights that are on every evening at the district ball fields, when no one is using them?  Just because some organization donated the lights, does not we are obliged to pay for the electricity to run them.
11. Discontinue paying fees to associations.  AZSBA, AASBO, NSBA, etc. will still continue to advocate for schools even if our district is not paying them. It is fine to pay for the services of these groups, but in these hard times, we cannot afford frills like this.
12. Cut all day kindergarten.  Sorry there is no proof that adding another 120 minutes of instruction (when you subtract for lunch, another recess, nap time, etc.) is worth the cost. These funds could be put to a much more productive use.
13. Eliminate IB.  Sorry but colleges do not give IB as much respect as AP.  And since CCUSD made the decision not to expand the program at the elementary and middle schools (too expense they said!) running both these programs is a waste of resources.
14. Cut the World Language programs.  No parents asked for this and it was a poor decision to implement it without a stable funding source.
15. Drop the Goldwater lawsuit appeal. You are throwing good money after bad with little hope of winning.