The program that provides services for special needs children in area schools slashed its budget by $543,785 at a meeting Wednesday night of the ANW Education Cooperative board. COLEMAN recommended doing only a one-year contract with Greenbush. The cooperative typically does a multi-year contract but feared it could not commit at this time to the services, though valuable.
The cut is about 4 percent of the cooperative’s $13 million annual budget.
ANW provides services for students in Allen, Anderson, Neosho, Wilson and Woodson counties. Services include speech/language pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, hearing-impaired specialty and nursing.
After a lengthy executive session for personnel the ANW board approved the cuts for the upcoming school year.
Lack of adequate funding from the state forced the unpopular move. Over the past several years funding has remained flat despite rising costs.
ANW Co-op Director Bob Coleman made recommendations to the board to make cuts in eight different areas in the cooperative, including:
* Cutting social worker positions;
* not replacing paraprofessionals who leave at the end of the year;
* not replacing the teacher trainer position;
* not renewing the cooperative’s information technology services and instead using in-house services;
* reducing Coleman’s salary;
* cutting operations costs at the central office by $7,000; and
* Saving on an occupational therapy contract with Greenbush Education Service Center.
Moving the ANW preschool to McKinley Elementary School in USD 257 will save the cooperative $20,000, Coleman said, though space to accommodate ANW staff will be an issue.
“This is not an easy task for any of us,” Coleman said.
Lisa Armstrong, a mother of an ANW Co-op student, said she is a huge supporter of social workers.
“I am broken-hearted that we could lose our social workers,” she said. “This is about saving children, not saving jobs.”
Armstrong mentioned having a social worker in the building is beneficial.
“We cannot produce productive individuals if we don’t intervene early,” she continued. “Having professionals with one-on-one services with a child… these should be one of the last services cut and I hate to see these services be farmed out to a contract worker or satellite worker.”
An ANW nurse who didn’t identify herself during the public forum mentioned that without social workers the nurses would have to take on more duties and would be short-handed.
“There are two nurses between all the districts,” she said. “With the medical needs of so many of these children we’ll take on so much of what social workers do, that’s what it boils down to. There’s not enough money to hire another nurse. If we don’t have these social workers to help these kids I don’t know what we’ll do.”
After approximately 45 minutes of executive session Brad LaRue, USD 413, made the motion to make the cuts.
“I don’t think we have any choice to proceed with the budget cuts and I move that we accept the list as presented,” LaRue said.
A second came from Wes Smith, USD 366. The motion passed 6-1 with Dawn Wilson, from USD 101, against it. Darrel Catron, USD 257, was not present at the meeting.
Board members approved a one-year contract.
Kansas Association of School Boards membership for $3,200 also was approved and was a KASB legal assistance fee for $1,650 was also accepted.
The board accepted the resignations of Dennis Peters, as a teacher-trainer, and Kathy Robertson, as assistant director.
ANW Co-op board approves budget cuts
