Like school districts statewide, the State College public schools have been compelled to cut several million dollars from their annual expense sheet over the past couple years.
Board members have moved to reduce the faculty and staff ranks and programming alike.
And with more reductions likely in the years to come, Acting Superintendent Michael Hardy said this week, it may behoove the school district to develop a more formal program-review process — perhaps involving an outside consultant.
‘I think it’s really difficult to ask a professional educator who’s devoted their entire career to a certain area … to look at it through an objective lens and say, ‘You need to cut something,” Hardy said at the Monday school-board meeting. ‘That’s a difficult task to be carried out.’
Specifically, he said, he was talking about State College Area School, where the variety of curricular options rivals some small colleges.
State High programs including the arts, driver education and athletics will see some strategic cuts in 2011-’12, according to the budget approved by the school board.
A combination of declining state and federal support, sluggish real-estate-value growth, rising fixed costs and state-dictated taxation limits have helped make the budget reductions necessary, board members have said.
Possible programmatic trims originally offered by the administration would’ve cut some areas — such as music education and athletics — more deeply, but a majority of board members eased the expected reductions after hearing impassioned public input.
Still, the underlying circumstances — the troubled school finances — are projected to persist for least the next several years, both locally and statewide, according to district-provided projections.
With that reality as a backdrop, Hardy said he will recommend to incoming Superintendent Robert J. O’Donnell that the district start a more formal program-review process for the 2012-’13 school year, particularly for State High.
‘There’s no program we don’t value. There’s certainly no individuals who teach those programs that we do not value,’ Hardy said Monday.
The difficulty, he went on, comes in prioritizing programs during tough economic times. And it’s nearly impossible for employees to prioritize their own programs, he said.
‘Popularity doesn’t necessarily indicate rigor. And just because something is rigorous doesn’t necessarily mean’ it’s most relevant for high-school students, Hardy said, referring to program offerings.
‘Utility and relevance. Those are the (key) things for students,’ he said. ‘ … The biggest thing we want to focus on is the objectivity’ of program analyses.
Hardy offered his thoughts to the board Monday primarily as an item of information. Preliminarily at least, board members appeared receptive to his approach.
O’Donnell, hired by the school board on June 13, is scheduled to begin work formally in State College on July 27.
Earlier coverage
