ICSD Budget Woes: How the District Can Manage this Year’s Challenges More Effectively

A large majority vote toppled the Board of Education’s budget proposal last spring, leaving over 5.9 million dollars in cuts from the planned budget. This has affected the high school in several ways, canceling classes, laying off administrators and educators, and removing some programs deemed non-essential. What could be done to reduce the negative effects of these changes?
 First, it is important to note that IHS has been hit especially hard by the budget cuts. It is clear that IHS programming has been given less priority than elementary-level education. For example, the highest item on the district’s list of budget priorities, “Literacy and Mathematics,” includes “teaching children to read and write at high levels” and a ”focus on elementary math.” Both of these things indicate a focus on primary education, through the categorization of “children” and “literacy,” often defined as the ability to read and write at a minimum acceptable level. Additionally, “K-5 class sizes” are listed above “Curricular and extra-curricular offerings [at secondary schools]” which have been significantly reduced due to a “class size minimum of seventeen.” Apparently, the district has decided that, even in a moment of crisis which requires a prioritization of short-term issues, the education of students that will graduate in the next decade is more important than those who will graduate in just a couple of years.
 One harmful effect of the budget crisis is that rumors, speculation, and confusion are currently running rampant throughout our school. The most prominent topic of speculation is the cutting of the Mandarin and Latin programs. I have heard this discussed multiple times at lunch with conflicting claims and a general lack of trust for the answers given by students. This doubt is reasonable as information from students passed through a game of telephone is not reliable. But the actual root of the problem—the reason this speculation is necessary in the first place—is that the district has been communicating poorly about this issue. For example, the main document the district provides to show what has or will be cut, called “Budget Development Timeline,” (accessible on the “Budget Development” page of the ICSD website) contains a table showing “reductions and shifts to programming in our school district.” This table is very unclear. It shows a variety of fundamentally different changes right next to each other. Programs that have been cut entirely out of the budget, like Latin, Mandarin, and AVID, are shown among programs that have been simplified or reduced such as the now combined AP and Level 5 French and German. Based on the information provided on the document, supposedly a resource for clarification on these changes, there is no clear way to determine the mentioned programs’ status. Given this ambiguity, it makes a lot of sense that students are speculating about what cuts are being applied to which programs. Additionally, the presentations about the budget from board meetings displayed on the ICSD website have many vague statements, often using acronyms and metrics without defining them. Understanding the budget to the full extent of what has been shared requires physically being at the meeting, which is an impossible expectation for members of the community. In addition, there have been missteps in communication about the things that are being cut. For example, students were informed about the Mandarin program’s cancellation before the teachers, causing widespread confusion and decreased trust in the district.
 To reduce the negative effects of the scramble to adjust to the reduced budget, the district must communicate in a more careful and concise way. For a start, the district should write its presentations as if they were talking to someone who had never been to a board meeting before, using simple language that anyone can understand. This would decrease the “barrier to entry” for these meetings, allowing everyone to have a say in the discussion. Another way to reduce student confusion would be a presentation by the board to students about the changes. If everyone’s source was automatically the ICSD leadership itself, there would be far less confusion surrounding what was actually happening.
 We know that IHS is experiencing a host of issues due to these reductions, partially due to the district’s prioritization of primary education. Many upperclassmen are becoming quite constrained in class opportunities due to the number of classes in many courses decreasing. While it is understandable that these cuts may have been unavoidable, in the future, the district should survey the students most affected in order to make informed decisions about scheduling. Since there is only one section for some classes, which period should that be? Obviously this can’t be fixed this year, but could be implemented in the future.
 Every issue that will be met with criticism should have some indication that the district is doing something to mitigate it in a meaningful way, not just “bracing for impact.” A small change in attitude would bring about increased accountability and confidence in the administration and Board of Education.