By Patrick W. Connelly
BROOKFIELD — More than 40 people stormed out of a school board meeting Wednesday night in Brookfield after learning 12 faculty members will likely lose their jobs.
“At this point I don’t think we can avoid the cuts,” new board member Kelly Bianco said after casting the deciding vote.
President Joseph Pasquerilla and board member Dean Fisher also supported the call that puts the district on track to eliminate a principal and five teachers at the middle school level, and four elementary and two high school teachers.
The teachers on the chopping block weren’t named but would be notified in writing at least 30 days before the suspension of their contracts.
The district could soon face a deficit somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 in addition to its current financial woes, Mrs. Bianco said.
Brookfield already has 35 fewer teachers than it did five years ago, union President Sally Schneider said. About 60 of the district’s 100 employees are teachers, Superintendent Steve Stohla said.
“We have been in a spiral that has only gone one way,” said board member Tim Filipovich, who along with Dr. Ronald Brennan opposed the cut.
Instead of cutting staff the board should find other methods to save money, they said.
“We have to eventually stop hemorrhaging money,” Brennan said. “I don’t think what we’re doing is working.”
Brennan said the board should find ways to promote an operating levy in the community, solve its contract problems with teachers and reduce legal fees.
“I don’t like to see us cutting teachers to help pay for lawyers,” he said.
The district is battling a group of parents in court over its refusal to bus students to John F. Kennedy High School in Warren, Ohio.
Rather than transporting the students, the board opted to pay a state fine that was cheaper than busing costs.
The board is also appealing a ruling by the State Employee Relations Board that told the district to reimburse teachers for the 3.5 percent loss in salaries incurred since a 2006 slashing of wages.
Filipovich said the district is operating a “bare bones” educational atmosphere for students hardly comparable to other Trumbull County schools like Hubbard, Howland or Girard.
Students earning average grades are doing fine, Filipovich said, but the district doesn’t have programs for exceptional students and those on the low end aren’t getting enough help.
As a community, Filipovich said, “we’re going to pay for it later. We have an obligation to prepare our students for the future.”
The high school needs to offer computer and advanced placement classes, he said.
“We just don’t have the money to do that,” said Mrs. Bianco, who was court-appointed in March to replace board member Steve Varga, who resigned.
Some sort of strategic plan needs to be formulated to get the district back on track, Mrs. Bianco said.
Pasquerilla said it’s easy to “look for different alternatives,” but you have to “put a dollar figure on it and say where it is coming from.”
For the district to recover financially, it would need between an 11-mill and 14-mill operating levy taxpayers may not favor after just months ago passing a 28-year, 7.4-mill levy to build a new school, Pasquerilla said.
Passage of an operating levy, even as soon as this summer, wouldn’t help the district until the funds begin to roll in next January, Stohla said.
Filipovich said the board suffers from its “unwillingness to solve” its current problems and needs to find ways to move forward in the right direction.
