Employee vacancies in the North Little Rock School District won't be filled for the foreseeable future unless safety or compliance with education standards are at stake.
The North Little Rock School Board established the partial hiring freeze and also took a look at school utility costs Thursday as part of ongoing efforts to prepare for the scheduled loss of $7.6 million a year in state desegregation aid to the 9,000-student system.
That special aid will end after the 2017-18 school year because of terms in a 2014 settlement to a long-running federal Pulaski County school desegregation lawsuit.
Superintendent Kelly Rodgers said he hopes the district can save upward of $500,000 to $1 million in staffing costs over the next two years, partially through employee resignations and retirements. The district has about 1,300 licensed and support staff employees.
Each vacancy that occurs in the district -- in the central administration or in schools -- will remain unfilled unless and until an internal district committee reviews it, identifies it as a critical position and recommends to Rodgers and the School Board that it be filled.
Karli Saracini, the district's executive director of human resources, will head the committee but other members will change depending on whether a particular vacancy is at the elementary or secondary school level or in the ranks of the support staff. The committee will meet on an as-needed, case-by-case basis in order to provide recommendations on a timely basis, Saracini said.
Board member Scott Teague emphasized that the action is not a "hard freeze" in which there would be absolutely no replacements hired.
"What this does is give us a chance to pause and think a minute," Teague said. "This is more for us seven board members sitting up here than anybody. About a year and a half ago we put into place a savings plan that was well-intended and we had a target we were shooting at budget-wise. But, for some good reasons and maybe some debatable reasons, we, ourselves, backed up on some of that."
He said the partial freeze is a means for the School Board to "put some of our own skin in the game" and hold themselves accountable. He called the partial freeze "an extra filter" to help insure fiduciary responsibility.
School Board President Darrell Montgomery said the coming end to the desegregation aid is certain and that cutting expenses is unavoidable.
"There will be some tough decisions that we'll have to make and that begins tonight," Montgomery said, adding that there is a process to fill any job deemed critical.
"We do have layers built in for protection to make sure the policy is applied fairly," he said of the plan.
The district, which has a budget this year of about $106 million, has in the past instituted an early retirement program, reduced the number of employees and employee workdays, and sold vacant property to pay for a systemwide school construction and offset the loss of the desegregation money.
Also to the effort of saving money, board members questioned district leaders about the utility costs at the newly built and renovated schools and the potential for savings. The utility costs have been higher than expected at schools that were expected to be more energy efficient than the schools they replaced.
The total utility costs at the extensively rebuilt North Little Rock High School were $278,503 between July 1 and Nov. 8 this year, of which $240,667 was for electricity and $25,000 was for water and sewer service. North Little Rock Middle School had total utility bills of $130,278, of which $113,588 was for electricity, during the same four-month period. Electricity, water, sewer, gas and garbage costs at the the elementary schools ranged from $21,672 at Boone Park Elementary to $42,651 at Crestwood since July 1.
Utility costs for all district properties, including vacant schools and support buildings total $763,232.60 for the four-month period.
Rodgers and Gene Hawk, the district's director of facilities, said steps are being taken to reduce the costs. Hawk said at the meeting and in an interview that the current costs are partly the result of the increased square footage -- 1.8 million square feet versus the 1.5 million square feet in the past, even though the number of schools has been decreased from 21 to 13.
Another factor affecting the costs are systems that draw fresh air into the buildings that must be heated or cooled by several degrees depending on the season. Older buildings used recycled air that did not require as much heating or cooling even though the old heating and cooling systems were less efficient per thermal unit.
Additionally, the district this summer and fall was completing construction at the campuses, even while the schools were in operation for students, which caused a draw on utilities. And, Hawk said, district staff are still learning how to best use centralized controls on the utilities.
Also adding to the costs are the maintenance of vacant buildings that have not yet been sold.
Teague said he wants to see the district identify where it should be in terms of costs and how it can force itself to get to that.
Hawk said the district is working toward an average 8 cents per square foot per month for electricity, as compared to almost 9 cents now. The district may have to invest in some changes to systems to generate savings in the long term, however. The high school cooling system that involves the use of water-filled towers may have to be redesigned, Hawk said.
The School Board began earlier this year to hold budget and academic improvement workshops on the first Thursday of each month. The next session is at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 1.
Metro on 11/18/2016