Over the last few months, Richardson ISD trustees have worked and reworked their budgets like the Apollo 13 space crew looking for those last few amps of power to get them back home. Despite a dramatic decrease in the state’s contribution to their education coffers, they think they’ve found a way to avoid teacher layoffs using a combination of measures which, when taken together, will get them back to balanced.
None of the cuts are popular with the “cuttees,” things like reducing starting salaries, freezing teacher pay and eliminating stipends for those who get Master’s degrees, but all agree they’re better than the alternative – furloughs and layoffs.
The Texas Legislature has yet to pass a school finance plan, but Superintendent Kay Waggoner is optimistic that they’ll handle the matter in a July special session. Problem is, her budget must be approved in June.
Luckily, the district got a recent boost from the federal government, which will send almost $6 million in stimulus money to RISD. That was a big one, like Gary Sinise/Ken Mattingly discovering he could recover power from the lunar module to make it all the way home. Still, waiting for state legislators to solve school finance woes may have trustees holding their collective breaths through the month of July while they wait for splashdown. No doubt teachers will be waiting, as well.
