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Cutting corners

Park’s school district is facing its third round of budget cuts in the last four years. As the prospect of the cut has sparked conversation throughout the community, Echo has sought administrative guidance in an attempt to create a factual and balanced piece. Although we pursued an administrative perspective, Park high school administration wouldn’t comment on the topic.
Social studies teachers Carley Kregness and Jill Merkle chatting in the hall during passing time Jan. 8. Both teachers wore black in solidarity of the Teacher Union.
Social studies teachers Carley Kregness and Jill Merkle chatting in the hall during passing time Jan. 8. Both teachers wore black in solidarity of the Teacher Union.
TJ Brayboy
Background on the budget

According to Park Superintendent, Dr. Carlondrea Hines, the projected deficit for the 2025-26 school year is two million dollars. She said it is expected that the school years to come will also have to undergo budget cuts. 

“(Two million) was the initial number prior to the final audit for fiscal year (2024) so now that we are in fiscal year (2025), they have new numbers that we are running to make sure that it is a total of two million,” Hines said. “There’s a projection with the continued declining enrollment that there will be another round of budget cuts next school year as well.”

Park has yet to release a final budget decision to the public; however, according to English teacher Kara Marlin, the consensus across Park Association of Teachers suggests that roughly $700,000 is to be cut from staff at the high school.

“What I have been told is that we are going to be cutting over $700,000 from the high school teaching staff,” Marlin said. 

Social studies teacher Charlie Mahaffey said certain areas of the budget received more funding than others in 2025 due to government requirements. He said amidst these cuts, the district has seen growth in areas such as transportation, administrative roles and new software.

“Over the last 50 to 70 years, education has slowly received cuts in the federal, state and local level, with the emergence of charter schools, school choice and private schools,” Mahaffey said. “This year, our transportation budget has grown significantly, we have hired more administrators and there is some software we’ve had to spend money on. Another thing was special education. The state of Minnesota increased the mandates for special education, requirements for teachers (and) classrooms that the district had to spend more money to fulfill.”

According to Hines, the growth in administrative roles is due to an increasing achievement gap between groups of students and a need for more guidance in the classroom. She said the newly added roles provide teachers with necessary counseling.

“(Our student achievement data) is an area where we need more leadership, guidance and support, which is the impetus of having an assistant superintendent and adding (assistant principals) at the elementary so that there could be more daily monitoring, coaching and support for teachers so that we can focus on student achievement,” Hines said. “We needed to have administrators in those learning spaces to observe and collect the data in order to say, ‘What is (it) that we are missing?’ (We look for) misalignment in our curriculum expectations, our implementation expectations and the results that students are receiving. (We need) to get things aligned and ensure that we are supporting teachers in their development and in their growth as our students need change every year.” 

Marlin said in addition to an increase in district funding at the administrative level, the budget for transportation also grew. Marlin said they hope the district considers some ways to reduce spending on transportation while maintaining open enrollment.

“Where we saw some serious increase in our spending was transportation. One of the reasons for that is we don’t own our buses as a district, we contract out. I would be curious to find out what the district is doing to try to make moves that would lessen our dependence on contracted bussing so that we can spend less on transportation because we have a lot of folks who are coming from other districts in open enrollment,” Marlin said. “I don’t think (open enrollment) should stop. Part of what makes this district beautiful is that we have such a diverse student body, but if we’re going to be a district that embraces open enrollment, I think that’s a place we could potentially look to make some changes long term.” 

According to Hines, the district has to look at all possible areas to make budget reductions. However, because staff salaries take up a majority of expenses, Hines said staff funding may have to be cut.

“We’re looking at everything, but the majority of our budget and our expenses, our staff, they take up 80% of our expenditures. We are looking at some staff reductions across all aspects of the district,” Hines said. 

Math teacher Erik Ahlquist said he understands why cuts may result in a direct-affect on teachers, but he wants the district to try its best to avoid cuts at the classroom level. He said because students spend the most time in classrooms, teachers have the nearest face-to-face influence for student achievement. 

“As a parent—I don’t have kids in school anymore—when my kids were in school, I always wanted budget cuts to be as far away from the classroom as possible. If they needed to get to the classroom, then everything else better had been looked at first, because that’s where my kids spend their time. My kids spend their time in the classroom. My kids don’t spend their time at the district office,” Ahlquist said. “I would want it to be as far away from the classroom as I could because the product that we produce in a school district is students. If you cut the nearest direct impact to students, or you adjust the nearest direct impact to students, which is teachers, then ultimately you risk not producing as good a product as you might.” 

According to Hines, the reason for implementing new administrative roles was for instructional guidance within the classroom. Hines said the role of these new  positions is to supervise how teachers are instructing as district principals have expressed a lack of time to focus on being in the classroom.

“(We’re putting) more resources into the school sites so that there’s a better feedback loop with monitoring student achievement. The whole purpose of retaining our administrators is so we have instructional leadership at the school sites that can help monitor how teachers are instructing and how they’re monitoring student data so that we can have students achieving at higher levels,” said Hines. “Being able to manage the high expectations that our community has for us is how we are going to be able to continue the relationships built in the classroom. We were informed by our principals that they needed some more support when it came to being in the building as administrators because they were spending a lot of their time in management mode as opposed to being instructional leaders.”

Direct impact on teachers

According to Marlin, teachers who are new to the district get laid off due to budget reductions. They said cutting the budget is harmful to both teachers and students who have built relationships within the school community. 

“Generally speaking, when there are budget cuts to be made, anytime that the district looks at cutting teaching staff, there’s a ‘first-in, last-out’ is what they call it. It tends to be those who are the least senior who end up being cut, which is devastating for our younger, newer teachers, who are trying to start a career here and who want to see themselves here long-term. It’s very demoralizing to get one year into working in a school district, build those ties to the community and then be ripped out of it,” Marlin said. “It’s hard for teachers. It’s hard for students who build those bonds with people who expect after summer to come back and still see those familiar faces.”

Ahlquist said among other proposals, an option for reducing the cost of staff is to increase the number of classes Park teachers have. According to him, this would result in a smaller amount of time spent working with students and would also exhaust teachers. 

“I heard one of the proposals was, every teacher teaches six out of seven classes. Well, that means you’re busy all but 50 minutes a day. What that means is you’re going to be busier in the morning getting ready for those classes. You’re going to be more tired at the end of the day, which ultimately means that students who need help outside of class are going to be impacted and in class, it’s more difficult (to get help),” Ahlquist said. “I worry about teachers, good teachers, saying, ‘you know what, this is more work than I’m expected to do at another district. I’m not going to stay here”.

According to Mahaffey, the budget cuts would impact teachers of all experience levels. He said they would stick veteran teachers with an intense workload.

“(The budget cut) would require that all teachers do (more work). It would hurt teachers at the end of their careers because they would be stuck. They wouldn’t be able to leave because they’re too expensive to hire in a different district and a move like that might be difficult for them—families here, careers here. It would be very difficult for teachers in the middle of their careers because they might feel stuck. Maybe they have a house here, maybe they have kids in the district. It would hurt young teachers because they’re the ones who would be cut,” Mahaffey said. “It would hurt potential teachers because looking at a schedule that’s five and a half classes—five classes one day, six the other day—or having six every single day, is going to be very unappealing. If this district was doing that when I was applying for jobs, I never would have applied to this district because it’s completely unreasonable.”

Marlin said the cuts shouldn’t reach teachers because Park is already experiencing a teacher shortage and staff are working to their limits. 

“Teachers are already making do with way too little and we are already working ourselves really, really hard and putting in a lot of extra time outside of building hours, on the weekends and the evenings in order to teach, in order to do our job, these cuts need to be found somewhere else in our district’s budget because we can’t, actually we don’t, have enough teachers to cut more teachers right now. We are already bare bones,” Marlin said. 

According to Mahaffey, the increased workload on teachers would directly affect students because teachers are face-fronting staff who build learning environments. 

“We believe that our working conditions, or teacher working conditions, are the learning conditions for our students. Anything that would impact our working experience and our working conditions is also bad for students in their learning experience. It’s a pretty simple equation—schools with more money invested in teachers lead to better educational outcomes,” Mahaffey said. “That’s why people send their students to schools that have money and cutting teachers, impacting teachers and making their lives harder, will inevitably hurt students. If people were going to send their kids to the most elite private schools and pay $60,000 a year, those teachers would teach three classes and have class sizes of 19. One of the other things that we can control is teacher workload and I think it’s important that we protect that.”

Hines said the district is keeping teacher burnout in mind and they’re making decisions. According to Hines the thought process behind cutting in classroom teachers rather than admin positions is because teachers have a salary that needs to be paid. According to Hines, the district was also concerned with lacking personnel to observe teachers. 

“There are concerns about teachers adding more to their plate. We are looking at every aspect to ensure that things are manageable, that we are asking all staff to do. Everyone at every level will be asked to do more,” Hines said.

Effect on Park programs and relationships

Senior Kaylee Rice said extracurriculars are essential as they’re a creative outlet for many students. She said there should be more investment into extracurriculars so that students can turn to these spaces as a source of creativity and community.

“It depends on the extracurricular activity, but I think they’re important, especially for students to express their interests and have a community outside of just the classroom,” Rice said. “That needs to be taken into account because they’re important to have. They should have a little bit more of the funding and the attention than they do now.”

According to Marlin, if teachers have too much to handle on their plates, it takes time away from putting energy into Park programs, which are crucial to providing safe spaces for students. Marlin said teachers are currently doing a lot of work outside of school hours and the cuts would limit the amount of work teachers are able to do outside of school.

“While as a district we have an equity mission statement and an equity vision, much of the work, the real work, ends up being done behind the scenes and after hours, right? For example, I currently advise the GSA, which is the Gender Sexuality Alliance. It’s a really, really special and important place for our queer students and allies of course too, to come together, be in community and get support, get resources,” Marlin said. “I’m not certain that if we make these types of changes, that I can continue to advise that club. That’s something that could be under threat when we look at adding more to teacher’s plates.”

Rice said the budget cuts have led to restrictions for Park’s theater program. According to Rice, there have been limitations on how the program is allowed to spend its funding.

“Everything has become (stricter) within theater; not only do we have less money to spend, but the way we’re allowed to spend that money has shifted drastically,” Rice said. “Not only do we have a smaller budget for purchasing the rights to shows or materials to build sets, but we also have to go through a stricter process with getting permission to use that money. We have to wait two weeks for someone in the administration to ‘okay’ it.” 

According to Mahaffey, the relationships that teachers build with their students are of the utmost importance. He said it’s not the coursework that motivates students, but rather having a teacher who teaches them how to care. He said the budget cuts will impact student-teacher relationships drastically.

“A lot of the things in our school that are based on relationships would go away. I imagine part of the reason students loved Ms. Emma was because they had a great relationship with her. It’s not because she gave excellent lectures on European history. It’s because of the person she was. And this dramatically decreases our capacity to do that, which I do think impacts academic success. No student wanted to work very hard because they cared about Napoleon. They had a teacher who made them care about the subject matter or was willing to support them in that effort and that is why they tried and you will see that deflate,” Mahaffey said. “I don’t necessarily think relational teaching and academic rigor are at odds. Students need relationships to be held to high standards.”

Four years of budget cuts have required student programming at Park to get creative with their funding. According to Rice, encouraging student involvement in fundraising has been a challenge. She said getting students to care is crucial if they want to be successful during fundraising.

“Convincing students to be a part of it (is difficult). It’s one thing to have the parent fund, but convincing students to go bag at Cub or do something outside of school is hard. A lot of people find it embarrassing or they just don’t care enough,” Rice said. “It’s important to get those people to care at least a little bit, or just find something that’s easier for students to participate in and outside of school.”

Maintaining strong education

According to Hines, the district approaches student choice cautiously. She said they’re looking at the minimum amount of cuts possible in hopes of not lessening students’ options. 

“We are looking at the least amount of cuts that would impact student choice when it comes to classes that they can take as student opportunities,” Hines said.

According to Marlin, teachers are always looking for ways to improve their curriculum creatively. They said the budget cuts will put teachers into crisis mode, which will eliminate their freedom to be creative in their teaching as they are in that constant mode of survival.

“Something that teachers have been continuously working on is improving their curriculum through culturally relevant teaching practices. We’re trying to make things feel meaningful to students and that requires time, energy, creativity and it is very, very difficult to think creatively when you are in survival mode,” Marlin said. “What everybody needs to understand is that this change would put teachers permanently in survival mode, where it is very, very difficult to bring your pedagogy up to the next level, to bring that curriculum up to that next level.”

According to Mahaffey, the deficit will result in constricted methods of teaching. He said teachers will instead have to think about what is most efficient, and that they will move away from projects or papers, opting for more assessment-based tests.

“I think teachers would generally move away from projects. A lot of teachers would have to move more towards assessments that do not require any feedback, so more tests that have right and wrong answers because those can just grade themselves. I think teachers would also have to move away from mixed models of instruction. They’ll have to spend more time doing prep work for their classes because they’re teaching more classes,” Mahaffey said.

Senior Sky Jungroth said she holds concerns about how the school will meet the needs of different students. According to her, the larger class sizes will not make learning any easier.

“My biggest concern is that I’m not going to be able to have help from teachers because sometimes I need a lot of help—if they can’t help then I don’t know who would,” Jungroth said. “Students with ADHD can’t function in classrooms with a lot of people and it’ll likely be a lot louder, too. I think it’s gonna be hard for the teachers to control.”

According to Ahlquist, the resource restraints will have a direct impact on both students and teachers. He said the increased workload will impact the teacher’s ability to perform at their very best. 

“If I’m teaching more classes, I have less time for students. The last test that we were getting ready for right before the break, the day before or the day of the test, I think I had 20 students in the classroom at 7:45 in the morning and they needed help,” Ahlquist said. “If I’m teaching more classes, I might not have the capacity, resources or ability to help those kids before school. Ultimately, when you increase the workload of teachers, whether you do that through making them teach more classes, or you increase class size, you affect students instantly.”

Mahaffey said he expects students who tend to seek more help from teachers and ask questions will suffer the greatest. He said some students come from environments that support them in a way where they’re not having to rely on the school so much.

“Students who need someone to understand them more, ask more questions, find creative ways to support them, and collaborate with other teachers to support them will suffer the greatest consequences. Students who understand school and feel like school is made for them and have parents who maybe went to college or parents who model that for them—students who are generally whiter, wealthier—those students will have an easier time because they don’t need teachers as much,” Mahaffey said. “If we parallel this with the pandemic, the students who are impacted the greatest when we made that transition were also poor students and students of color. And that’s essentially what we’re doing, is we’re taking the educational institution, stretching it thinner, reducing the number of people who can do it, and then hoping that learning happens. I think those students will suffer the most.” 

According to Jungroth, there are a variety of students who struggle to work on their own and seek a higher level of guidance compared to others. She said a degree of support will become difficult to provide as teacher support lines become more difficult to access. 

“I know a lot of people aren’t good at working by themselves and they need someone to guide them,” Jungroth said. “A lot of teachers are going to be limited with the help they can provide.”

A look into the future

Along with Park renovations in 2024, a new space called The Link was opened, a new study spot for students. Rice said while it’s exciting to have spaces such as The Link, she hopes to see the administration improve its communication with students and listen to their feedback. 

“I want (the administration) to talk to students more. It feels like a lot of where our money has been spent has been areas where teachers or students aren’t necessarily asking for it,” Rice said. “It’s nice to have The Link and other things, but if it can’t be used to its full potential, there are other things that are also lacking funding that could be done a bit better. I’d rather have more funding for the arts programs at our school than have The Link.”

Marlin said the teacher union thinks the solution to the budget cuts will not be found at the classroom level. According to Marlin, there are ways to approach this deficit that will not have such an extreme impact on students and teachers.

“The position of the teachers union is simply that we’re not going to try to come up with some other solution that cuts teachers. We need to ensure that these cuts just don’t happen at the classroom level. There are other places in the budget where those cuts can happen,” Marlin said. “We thoroughly believe that there are other places that they can look in the budget to make cuts and save money that would not have as drastic of an impact on students and teachers in the classroom.”

According to Hines, a big part of the budget being effective is emphasizing community needs. She said it is important to make Park a place where families send their kids.

“We have to look at how we deliver services so that we don’t have to go through budget reductions every year because we have to have some stability in our structure so that we can begin to level out expectations. With a decline in enrollment, we have to figure out a system because I believe our students, our staff and our parents, are our biggest marketing tool,” Hines said. “We have to figure out the narrative that is being carried out because we are not capturing all of our potential students that live in Park. We are at an 82% capture rate of all of the residents that live in Park that are school-eligible and with open enrollment. Families are making decisions as to whether or not they attend Park, right? As a district, we are doing our due diligence to ensure that we are carrying the narrative that this is a great place where families should want to send their kids to be educated because we care about students and we are developing the whole child and ensuring that they can leave Park with the legacy of excellence that will impact our overall community.”

Rice said moving forward, the theater program will continue to reuse materials they have and continue fundraising. She said she encourages other extracurriculars to spend their money creatively because support from the district is limited.

“Find ways to reuse something, be more creative with how you spend your money because the district is not going to give you a lot,” Rice said. “They’re cutting back and you will only get so much from fundraising. If you don’t want to spend all (of) that much time fundraising because it’s time-consuming, be more creative and patient with how you spend your money.”

According to Ahlquist, families, parents and students play major roles in making change happen. He said by sharing opinions and asking questions, they can better understand district funding and decisions. 

“Ultimately, students and families have the largest voice because they’re the consumers. If none of us liked Apple phones, none of us would buy them. I have one. You have one. Other people have one. If Apple started making a bad product, people would just quit buying it. Consumers are the ones that drive what should happen, so hopefully parents and students like Echo who are inquiring about this and parents that inquire about this should be voicing their opinion about what they want,” Ahlquist said. “Now if they overwhelmingly say, ‘we want teachers to teach more because they don’t work hard enough,’ then I think that we have to look at that and have a conversation about that. But that’s not the sense I get, I don’t get that sense ever. I get the sense that parents want those cuts as far away from the classroom as well, the same way I would if I were a parent of a student at Park, I’d want (them) to be as far away from the classroom. So what does that mean? That means you look at the district office and you look at admin first and you figure that one out. Parents and students need to keep on inquiring, asking questions, and figure out how these decisions are being made, so that when the decisions are made, they already know and then they can make informed decisions about what they want to do next.”

Correction – Jan. 29, 2025: Grammatical changes have been made throughout the story to align with Associated Press stylistic guidelines.

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