-One of the two police officers who have been stationed at Joplin High School
-All part-time reading teachers
-Some secretaries, bus drivers, cooks, and teacher's aides
-Starting school late at all campuses, even though the high school is the only one that is not going to be ready on time and cutting two weeks of classes for the 2014-2015 school year. This enables the district to pay everyone except certified employees less.
-Not hiring summer custodians this year and calling for volunteers to help move items into the new high school.
-And the following one that may shock a few readers- they cut the video scoreboard for the new high school (Jumbotron-type scoreboard).
For those of you who were excited about the prospect of having a jumbotron in the high school gymnasium, don't worry- it will be there. It was the second jumbotron- the one that had been in the plans for the commons area- that did not survive C. J. Huff's budget axe.
The cut of the second jumbotron was part of a reduction of half a million dollars in the district's cost of a federal Economic Development Administration grant, which still includes a $750,000 match from the district.
Most of the money from the grant, which was awarded in May 2013 for Franklin Technical Center, went for audio-visual equipment for the high school's Jet 14 studios and video production classes, even though that was not the original intent of the grant.
The EDA issued this news release on the two-year anniversary of the Joplin Tornado:
Earlier this year, Economic Development Administration also invested $3 million in Joplin to support the rebuilding and equipping of the Franklin Technical Center. Operated by the Joplin School District, the Franklin Technical Center will provide skills training to students in the school system, as well as specialized training to adults already in the workforce, allowing for the enhancement of the career training program focused on manufacturing and technology.
At some point in the process, R-8 officials eliminated the training for adults and cut almost everything except the video production items, video walls for the commons area and, of course, the jumbotron for the gymnasium.
R-8 officials said that earlier grant proposals sent to the EDA were rejected, but apparently the federal government was willing to go along with a proposal that included large video screens for a high school gymnasium that is not remotely connected to Franklin Technical Center (except, of course, that school officials have put the whole operation in the same building).
Reportedly, the shift in priorities away from using the grant for job preparedness occurred after some well-heeled donors decided not to pay for the jumbotron(s) and audio-visual equipment.
3 comments:
Gee, his fiscal restraint is so admirable. Maybe he's going to redirect those funds to pay for his 6.5 miles of ribbon.
Huff has cut the very people the district needs to keep schools safe and efficient. He has not cut a single job position from JSAB. That he would cut two weeks of instruction for the younger grades in order to save money in the lesser paying jobs, while simultaneously protecting those at the top, tells us everything we need to know about his priorities. His priorities have nothing to do with learning, or he would not have eliminated the reading positions.
He should have been fired long ago. I predict this year's scores will be down even more than previous years. That alone should be enough to end this travesty of mismanagement and skewed priorities.
Unless he can intimidate enough people to lie (which wouldn't be the first time), it should be quite obvious to an auditor that the funds intended for FTC are being misappropriated. Or he will get around that little problem by claiming that AV production is part of FTC, although they have never been housed at FTC.
Huff and company have always viewed FTC as a dumping ground for high school students with behavioral or learning problems. The adult programs are completely a thorn in his side until they turn over money at the end of the year so he can use it on one of his pet projects, which won't be Franklin Tech. Apparently he doesn't realize that the people who work on his car, service or repair HVAC in his house or office, nurses when he or a family member are hospitalized, or many other services related jobs got their technical training in a place like FTC, not in college.
On a positive note, some of the secretaries whose jobs were eliminated could apply for the Assistant to BF coordinator at $30K a year. I would venture to say there is no other secretary or assistant in the district being paid $30K unless it's the Superintendent's secretary and she should be paid double that amount just to put up with him.
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