Pleasant Valley School District is looking to pare down its staff in part due to declining enrollment.

In addition to retirement incentives, the school district on Thursday approved eliminating up to two administration positions and up to 40 other positions. These include: 12 special education positions, two school counselors, five reading specialists, two math specialists, five secondary math positions, seven reading teachers at the middle school, two sixth-grade teachers, two instructional support positions, one English teacher at the high school, one gifted teacher position, and one Spanish teacher.

The resolution stated that several of the specialists would be reassigned to classroom teaching positions.

Superintendent James Konrad said that in the past 10 years, the district has seen a nearly 30% decrease in enrollment, but the number of employees had decreased by only 17%.

“The student enrollment trend was not considered when people left, instead employees were replaced,” he said in an interview.

Konrad said he has visited the schools. Sometimes, he has seen four to six adults in a classroom.

“There are areas in the district that are overstaffed,” Konrad said. “If we don’t get this right, we are going to be in dire straits for the next three to four years. I want to put this in our past where we don’t have to discuss furloughs year after year.”

At the school board meeting Thursday night, the school district announced two resolutions to furlough 17 professional employees and not renew the positions of nine temporary employees. This is in addition to the 21 teachers, specialists and a guidance counselor that took the early retirement incentive in March, and the 16 support staff members whose decision to take the retirement incentive was approved Thursday night. Those support staff employees include: custodians, Wanda Jones-Jordan, Barbara Lackey, James Serfass and Juanita Atkins; paraprofessionals, Sandy Bojko, Linda Cuprill, Bonnie Drinkwater, Christina Fiorito-McGowan, Jane Foust, Diane Nagy, Karen Newton, Mary Smith, Arline Wojy, Paulette Chopick and Martha Smith; and secretary, Cheryl Heckman.

Drew Dymond, the president of the Pleasant Valley Education Association, called it an anti-education resolution.

“I say anti-education resolution, because that is essentially what it is. The resolution paints a rosy picture of life after furloughs, nonrenewals, resignations and retirements. If this resolution passes, I can’t see how opportunities for our students will be the same,” he said. “Do we really believe losing over 50 professional staff will not cost us anything for our students? Remember, we’re not talking about just teachers; we’re talking about our band directors, our advisers and our coaches as well.”

Konrad said in the interview that he is working with some universities to offer college-level classes at the high school that would be taught by teachers at the high school. He said this would allow district students to gain college credit while in high school.

Currently, high school students in honors classes do not get college credit, and those in advanced placement classes have to take a test at the universities they plan to attend to get the college credit. This new setup would eliminate the test and automatically offer the college credit.

As far as the gifted program and the foreign language programs, the resolution stated that the course offerings of honors and advanced placement courses at the high school would satisfy the needs of gifted students, and the foreign language program just doesn’t have enough students interested in studying a foreign language.

The school district is looking at a $3 million deficit in the budget with a tax increase of 4.7%, which is the maximum allowed by the state. Even at that, the district anticipates needing to dip into the general fund again in order to balance the budget, Konrad said.

The school district also listed the cost of cybercharter schools is hurting the school district’s bottom line. The school district has paid out nearly $4 million to cybercharter schools and its own Pleasant Valley Cyber Academy. PVCA used a program by VLN Partners for about $1 million. That cost has been reduced to about $126,000 when the school board ended its contract with VLN and opted to go with Seneca Valley School District and their cyber program using Edgenuity.

Salaries and benefits and the school district’s required contribution to the employee pension fund are other large expenses for the school district. The school district is required by state law to contribute 35.26% in pension contributions to the Public School Employees’ Retirement System. This percentage will continue to go up until 2030, when it hits a maximum of 37.3%.

According to PSERS, the contribution required by the school districts in the 2000-2001 school year was 1.94%, the lowest since 1960. It stayed around the 1% rate until 2003-2004 when it increased to 3.77%. It has had risen in steady incremental increases since then.

The school board passed both resolutions in regards to staffing.