RSD's Misleading Budget "FAQ"

Dear REA and Reynolds Community,

Last week Superintendent Caropelo emailed a link to RSD’s budget FAQ. Unfortunately, much of district administration’s answers to staff and community questions are one-sided, ignore educator workload realities, and make claims that are exaggerated, misleading, or just plain wrong. 

While we will not deny some costs today did not fully exist in 2000, some of them are offset by costs that no longer exist at all. Not every new cost must be fully absorbed without cutting elsewhere. None of the questions the district responds to, however, ask why RSD is in this position, as it is well-established that state funding and the school funding formula are inadequate for sufficient student support and learning. Most of the budget questions put to district administration relate to the fact that current district office positions continue to outnumber district office positions back in 2015. 

Misdirection 
One of the first things to emerge is the wide range of dates the district chose to use throughout their FAQ. It should be unsurprising that they regularly bounce between 2000, 2015, 2022-23, this school year, and the next school year, depending on the data that most conveniently fits the narrative they are trying to weave. Don’t take the bait. It’s meant to obfuscate and confuse. 

Their greatest display of information gymnastics is how they chose to look at proportionate cuts. District administration wants to only look at the year of “highest” FTE compared to next year. This ignores, or deliberately hides, that the recent Diaz administration nearly doubled district office staffing. During the same period, licensed staffing also grew, but by only a fraction of district office positions (admin and others). 
What bothers REA leadership most, however, is that district office staffing numbers are wrong. They are wrong in a manner that benefits them at every turn. 

Misinformation: Licensed FTE
Licensed staffing will not be 624 FTE next year. In reality, we will sit at 582 FTE next year. If they want to make it 624, we will happily welcome them bringing back 44 of our union colleagues, relieving the number of RIFs by more than half, and reducing our extreme class sizes and caseloads. 

The reality is that the district cut about 50 licensed FTE last year. While some FTE was brought back throughout this school year, district administration cut an additional 116 FTE last month. The administration seems to have forgotten they cut most of the TOSA positions, plus a handful of others in April 2024. The reality is the difference between certified’s highest FTE of 741 (in 2023-24) to next year’s 582 FTE is a cut of 159 certified FTE. That is a 21.5% cut of our certified positions by the district in two years. 16.8% of those cuts came this spring.   

Misinformation: District Admin FTE
But they don’t just get certified numbers wrong. They get the number of district administration positions wrong as well, again in their favor. Unless an additional, unannounced cut currently sits in the budget, the district administration has 20 FTE positions, not 19. They list an additional.4 FTE in the budget as “Temporary Admin Salary” counting it as a cut. But that’s not a real cut. They simply moved it so that they can pretend it does not exist. This means district admin staffing levels continue to be higher than in 2015, not lower as they suggest. 

District administration chooses to focus on the highest FTE under the Diaz years because it creates the appearance they are taking the most significant hit, despite the fact they agree the district office was beyond bloated at that time and happily pushed several Diaz hires out the door (appropriately and with REA’s appreciation) with no intention of refilling their jobs. 

It remains to be seen whether these numbers are wrong due to dishonesty or ineptitude. I’m not sure which concerns REA leadership more. 

Private vs Public
During our preliminary furlough discussions, district administration claimed FTE data was not a proper way to look at these things. Rather, we should be looking at total spending for these positions. We have no problem with this, but two weeks later, we were informed that getting such information to us could take several more weeks. Meanwhile, the district administration is choosing to publicly use FTE data as their main point to defend their cuts as equitable-ish.  

Disconnect with the Classroom
The most disappointing portion of their FAQ is their focus on how much more work they have at the district office while wholly disregarding how much student-facing work has increased and changed in the last five years. Their disconnect from the dire realities of disrupted learning, mental health, and physical safety for students and staff alike is dumbfounding. 

Other
There is one point REA leadership will not argue as inaccurate, but we do question the timing of their response. District administration notes that the district office specialists we have cited as having grown over 119% since 2015 were mostly moved over from the classified ranks. In private strategy sessions for over a month with our OSEA union siblings, in joint meetings with district administration, and publicly in Budget Hearings and Board Meetings, we’ve discussed the number of specialists in the district office. This FAQ to the public is the first time they have responded to our concerns. If most of this really is as simple as reclassifying from classified to administrative, there seems to be little reason to have sat on this information for so long.  

REA leadership will continue to work and fight for Reynolds schools, staff, and students. We will not be cowed by the district administration’s bullying tactics and misinformation. We will continue to work side-by-side with our OSEA union siblings on a furlough MOU with safeguards to return days when certain benchmarks are met.

​In Solidarity, 
Jeffrey Fuller
REA President