ASD survey reveals community priorities for cost savings | News

ASD survey reveals community priorities for cost savings | News






Aspen School District Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry, seen here in an Aspen Daily News file photo, said survey results about potential cost-saving measures will set an agenda for the district moving forward as it looks to rebuild its reserves.




Aspen School District administrators, staff and parents suggested increasing class sizes, reevaluating staffing and salaries, and improving energy efficiency among the ways the district could save costs to rebuild its depleted reserve balance.

A survey sent out to the community asking for suggestions to make existing ASD programs and services more cost-effective without compromising quality received 521 responses, 67% of which were parents and 18.5% of which were teachers. The survey came as the district ramped up its efforts to identify significant cost-saving measures, convening a task force to address ASD’s financial picture. 

The expense-cutting task force aims to reduce spending by $500,000 to $1 million per year to build up the district’s reserve balance after it decreased nearly 75% in the past five years. The survey responses will serve as guiding principles in identifying where to cut costs, Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry said.

“This will completely set an agenda for us, and also give us a lot of great feedback to our task force itself and what they’re going to be doing,” he said. 

Staffing and salaries, class sizes, administrative structure, operational efficiency and resource management were the top five themes mentioned in the survey. Several responses suggested increasing class sizes could be an adequate way to reduce costs.

The district has prided itself on maintaining small class sizes. But participants in the survey said slightly larger class sizes would not significantly impact student learning and could reduce staffing costs. 

Mulberry said increasing class sizes would likely look like going from 12 to 17 or 18 students per class on average. While the ASD board of education has prioritized small class sizes in the past, board President Christa Gieszl said the board saw the survey as a way to gauge community sentiment, and make changes that the community sees is best for the schools.

“I think we are open to everything right now,” Gieszl said. “I think we want to do this in partnership with the community. We represent the community (as a board) and I want to know what the community is interested in, and if this is where the tide is turning right now we want to support that. If that’s the best thing for our students collectively, we should absolutely look into that.”

The task force does not plan to look at layoffs when identifying where to save costs. ASD will likely make cuts through attrition — not rehiring when positions go vacant — and look at reorganization of roles.

It will likely mean some staff members will have to take on more responsibilities, Mulberry said. 

“There’s going to have to be some positions and some reworking and reorganization of what that looks like, because it’s 85% of the budget,” he said. “So far, it looks like we’re able to maintain what we had promised at the beginning of this, that we’re not looking to make cuts. If we have an attrition cut, we just won’t replace those positions.”

The survey also exposed areas of misconceptions about the district’s budget. 

Several respondents pointed to the district’s employee housing program as a way to cut costs, suggesting things like employees in the housing should pay for their utilities. Employees in the district’s nearly 100 housing units pay utility bills as part of their rent. 

ASD also funds its housing program completely separate from its general fund. It has a housing program fund that is sustained through rental incomes and is used for repairs, maintenance and upkeep on the units. A majority of the units were purchased or built through a $114 million bond that voters approved in 2020.

“(The survey) was also an opportunity for us to fix and clean up some of those misconceptions,” Mulberry said. 

The district will host a series of staff meetings to discuss the survey results and next steps after the winter break. It will host a town hall for the community on Thursday, Jan. 23 at 5:30 p.m.

“Entering into this period when we need to do some belt-tightening … it was good to know where people are standing and what they know and what they think,” Gieszl said. 

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