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SHORTFALL FORCES TOUGHCALL The Shield investigates the factors that caused McCallum to eliminate fine arts coordinator job at end of school year EVIE BARNARD staff reporter In Heather Ramsay?s five years at McCallum as Fine Arts Academy coordinator, she has built in strategic planning, strengthened team-building between academies, established Academy Ambassadors, co-designed a software database for record-keeping and analysis, worked to make the Fine Arts Academy more equitable and set the required academic bar for majors raising passing grades by 75 percent. Multiple teachers and Ramsay?s boss, principal Nicole Griffith, vouch for the terrific work Ramsay has done, but McCallum and AISD do not have the money to keep her on staff. Multiple factors have played a role in this budget shortfall, most significantly district-wide budget cuts and a new staffing model implemented for the upcoming school year intended to make spending across the district more equitable. WORKI NG I N A DEFICI T Kristen Ashy is one of the nine Austin Independent School District trustees on the board that helped approve this new budget, administered due to the district?s fund balance. The fund balance is a functional operation of the district, providing money to pay teachers, maintain grounds and support basic functions. This balance is funded by property taxes, which are collected by the state and then redistributed to districts. But unlike a monthly paycheck, AISD only receives this money a few times a year. To ensure that the district is always able to function, a policy requires it to keep 20 percent of its overall balance in this fund. ?For the past couple of years AISD has been working at a balance deficit,? Ashy said. ?AISD is spending more than what we?re bringing in. And that was OK because we had a fund balance, but then the coronavirus happened and we had a significant amount of expenditures we weren?t expecting. We find ourselves in a situation where we are about to be out of compliance with our policy, which requires us to keep 20 percent of our overall balance in this fund. And if we don?t change the way we?re spending, then we will go way below the level that we can on that fund balance, which impacts multiple aspects of the district.? AISD is not alone in this COVID-related debt; it is something schools nationwide are facing, and which Congress attempted to address by passing the CARES Act. The CARES, or Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act is a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill providing money to help offset additional expenditures because of COVID. Part of this stimulus bill, The Austin AmericanStatesman reported on April 1, includes a relief package for public education, which has been broken up into two separate checks. In 2020, Texas accepted this first payment of $1.3 billion for its schoolGraphic systems, and McClellan. currently, the by Anna acceptance of the second check?which could provide almost $18 billion for school systems
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Heather Ramsay sits in her mostly empty office at the beginning of the fall semester 2016 when she started her tenure as fine arts coordinator. Due to an AISD budget shortfall, Ramsay will no longer be working at McCallum in the upcoming 2021-22 school year. While she called McCallum family, she also said she was looking forward to future opportunities. ?I feel that the universe opened a door for me that I wasn?t sure whether I needed to open,?Ramsay said. ?For someone who?s in my position and just the way I?ve always worked, I constantly have my own personal and professional goals?I?m always looking into the future. So losing this position is not a stop in my life. It?s just now this particular door is closed. I?ve been thinking about all these other things in my life that I have the capabilities of doing and places I want to go and live, and maybe this is the universe providing a doorway so that I can go and do that.? Photo by Julie Roberson. alone ? is up for debate within the legislature. But whether these funds will go back to school districts is uncertain. The first stimulus bill Texas accepted in 2020 was used to offset state funding instead of providing additional funding to the school districts, for whom it was intended. The reason the legislature was able to do this, explains Ashy, is because of HB3. HB3, or House Bill 3, is a bill that was passed in 2019. The activist group Raise Your Hand Texas reported on May 25, 2019, this bill brought more money into the classroom, but at a higher cost to the state. According to Ashy, Texas is covering this additional cost with the funds from the CARES Act. HB3 additionally adjusted statewide staffing formulas to ensure equity within the district. Currently, AISD has a staffing formula of 450 students per administrator. According to the Austin Chronicle on March 19, HB3 made it so that low-income students get weighed higher on that formula, and are provided with 20 percent more staff. But because of the budget shortfall, AISD
doesn?t have the money to hire these additional teachers, forcing the district to cut teachers from higher-income schools. To further complicate matters, AISD is currently over-employed, as they did not expect the sharp drop in student population?from 80,911 to 75,059 students- from COVID, according to Ashy. Fewer students means the district needs fewer teachers and will have to cut positions. ENROLLMENT DECLI NES One reason there are fewer students is that some students have left public schools to avoid online learning. Many students who found online school especially challenging switched from public school to homeschool or to private school. Students who couldn?t afford either but still had specific needs that were not being met online switched to charter schools. Though these schools may be beneficial for individual students, according to activist groups, such as Raise Your Hand Texas, their effect on the state? and statewide education? is challenging and controversial.
Charter schools are meant to provide an alternate education to students. But critics of charter schools contend that because Texas charters schools rely on public not private funding, they divert monies that would otherwise be available for traditional public school budgets. ?Schools were founded on the promise of fostering locally developed, innovative approaches to educating children, but policies that favor charter schools over traditional schools have created a parallel and inefficient public school system at a significant cost to the state and its students,? Raise Your Hand Texas contends on its website, ?Charter school students in Texas receive a funding advantage of $1,100 more per student compared with students in our state?s major urban and suburban school districts. As a result, it costs the state more to operate a charter school than it does to operate a neighborhood school with the same students in the same community.? The reason charter schools can do this, explains the group, is because of SB2, or Senate Bill 2, passed by the Texas legislature in 2013. This bill, meant to put restrictions on charter schools, actually madeit easier for them to expand. ?Since the passage of SB2, charter school enrollment has increased 100 percent and has caused state funding for charters to increase from $1.2 billion to $3.1 billion per year,? Raise Your Hand Texas reports on its website. ?The number of charter schools has increased 43 percent over the same period. ? This rapid growth of charters, because of limited transparency and oversight over expansion, has led to unnecessary, inefficient and costly duplication of facilities, transportation and public education services.? Charter schools take students away from preexisting school systems, which in Texas, are funded by enrollment and attendance. AISD?s 2020-21 budget plan estimated that the district receives approximately $5 million in revenue for every 1 percent in attendance. The district has lost a significant amount of these funds due to the 5,000 students who unenrolled because of COVID and the declining student population from the high cost of living in the City of Austin. THE RECAPTURE CONUNDRUM Because of this high cost of living AISD is considered ?property wealthy? in the eyes of the state, making AISD susceptible to the state ?recapture?system, nicknamed ?Robin Hood.? This system redirectsproperty-taxdollarsfrom ?property wealthy? districts to the budgets of lower-income districts.But it isn?t a perfect system. ?Because of recapture, AISD keeps half of our property taxes and pays roughly half back to the state,? Ashy said. ?However, it?s not a perfect algorithm, meaning not all of the money we send back actually goes to other districts. It goes into what?s called the general fund, which means it can be spent on whatever state legislators decide to spend it on. That can be a multitude of things, including highways or health expenses for our state.? Due to the ever increasing home values in the neighborhoods that AISD serves, the district has become the biggest payer in the recapture system. According to AISD?s 2021 budget, in 2021, nearly 46 percent of all local revenue collected from property taxes will be given to Robin Hood? an average of $606.3 million. From the year 2007, when it was first adopted, to 2021, AISD will have paid the state of Texas close to $4 billion, providing almost one fourth of the total funds collected. story continueson page 18
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During a Saturday work session on the outdoor stage on April 24, technical theatre director Kristin Vandenberg and freshman Zoe Marie Gravois (top right) work on the set for Clue: Live on Stage. The outdoor stage allowed the school to continue to hold performances even during the pandemic. Teachers, staff, parents, students, and volunteers alike worked to complete it. In recent months this stage has been used for a musical, a play, and student-directed dance shows. Piano teacher Kate Wiley (bottom right) praises her students after their successful recital in the MAC on May
Band teacher Zackary Travis (left) at the first in-person concert rehearsal for the concert band in nearly a year on March 1 in the cafeteria. Theatre director Joshua Denning (below) instructs the crew of Urinetown during rehearsals held just outside the entrance to the large gym on Saturday Feb. 6.
FINE ARTS FACULTY GALLERY: Principal Nicole Griffith explained the difficult decision to cut the fine arts coordinator position: "We have to prioritize teaching. Teachers are the most important employees in the school. We don?t have unlimited resources, so I had to make a choice. Instead of cutting back on our teaching staff, we decided to restructure." Dance Company director Rachel Murray (right) joins the pre-pro class for a Dec. 10, 2019, master class from Valerie Pettiford, a colleague of legendary American dancer and choreographer Bob Fosse. Fox 7 Austin reporter Leslie Rangel (below) interviews AV teacher Ken Rogers about his students' scheduled involvement at the SXSW Film Festival on March 3, 2020. Photo by Dave Winter.
Carey West (above) sports some funky specs while presenting a session on DIY lens filters with Andrew Cooke at the Association of Texas Photography Instructors Winter Conference at UT-Arlington in February of 2019. Classical guitar teacher Andrew Clark (right) plays with his guitar students on April 20. Photo by Dave Winter.
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Art teachers Ana O'Keefe, Carey West and Jeff Seckar-Martinez install the Peace Rock Garden in front of the MAC art classrooms on April 24. John Photo by Dave Winter. Orchestra senior Pratt teacher Ricky Pringle directs the orchestra at its fall concert in the PAC in October 2018. Photo by Madelynn Niles.
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Confused about college? It's OK; you're not alone. While Classof 2022 still has a year to go before leaving high school, college stressis alreadybuilding
GRACE NUGENT online co-editor in chief A few days ago I was recommended an episode of the podcast This American Life by my amazing and thoughtful math teacher, Mr. Pass. The episode was titled ?The campus tour has been canceled,? depicting a struggle that both juniors and seniors are having with college admissions during the pandemic. While Mr. Pass may have been unaware of the stress I was feeling, the podcast resonated with me. The junior class still has time before applications are due to enroll in the fall semester of college next year, but stress is already building. The tours have been canceled and acceptance rates, admission numbers and criteria for getting in have all shifted due to the pandemic that we are currently facing. According to an NBC article, "Covid is making it harder to get into a top college," the 2020 admissions cycle saw an uptick in applications yet fewer acceptances. In fact, Harvard had a 57% increase in applications, making it one of the most competitive years in the school?s history. This change renders the graduating classes of 2021, 2022 and perhaps even 2023 clueless about what universities are looking for. I?ve had my fair share of struggles with English homework, psychology notes,
A period of cluttered desks, filled with everything from college letters to huge SAT prep books to homework, is a constant for juniors. With the end of the 2020-2021 school year fast approaching, the realities of the next few years are starting to loom. Higher volumes of college applications and decreased availability for campusvisits affected the class of 2021, and now the class of 2022 is still feeling a similar worry surroundingnavigatingapplications. Photo by Alysa Spiro. remembering dates in APUSH, but most of my caffeine-fueled midnight homework freak-outs are due to the fact that I feel totally and utterly lost about what is to come after my senior year of high school. This is not in any way trying to say that my teachers have not prepared me adequately for the coursework that is awaiting me and my fellow classmates. But when it comes to actually applying to the kind of schools I am interested in, I don?t know where to begin. Courtesy of COVID-19, this year is different, and not just because most schools have waived SAT and ACT requirements. There are not as many in-person college visits, and kids either don?t have time or are unable to risk health and safety to f ly to other states and admire campuses on tours. Junior year has been tough, especially with the constraints of limited human interaction and being confined to my room all day. I have four AP classes, a pre-AP math class (thanks again Mr. Pass for actually helping me somewhat like math), an extra science class, journalism and, of course, extracurriculars. It?s hard. I?m up
?Most of my caffeine-fueled midnight homework freak-outsare due to the fact that I feel totally and utterly lost about what is to come after my senior year of high school."
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late every night trying not to procrastinate and finish my homework along with worrying about things that many teenagers do, such as my public persona or who I am going to hang out with over the weekend. Add in an ACT prep course and numerous emails from college admissions offices in my inbox, and you have a fully stressed-out high schooler who is confused about what?s to come beyond the physical and virtual walls of McCallum. Just by taking a preliminary glance at what exactly I need for college applications, my brain starts turning gears and panic mounts about applications, visits and rejection letters. Some may argue that juniors have lots of time to figure out where they want to apply, but the reality of the pandemic has made the future so much more daunting. Not to mention the many college emails and letters that, while have menial meaning, still show up in inboxes and mailboxes tearing down or building up hope. We students just need more support with college applications, especially in this new and challenging time, and that?s OK. Colleges (and their frustrating websites), counselors, teachers and parents all need to be more patient with us than they would be under normal circumstances. We also need to be patient with ourselves, too, and work on taking a breath and relaxing. Life is so different right now, and while we are on a time limit, we are all entitled to cutting ourselves some slack every now and then and accepting that we have no idea what we are doing or what the future holds.
The Princeton Reviews Complete Book of Colleges has statistics and insight into admissions rates and tuition costs.
Written by Jeffrey Selingo, this New York Times notable book of 2020, takes a look inside the admissions office.
Similar to the Princeton Review, the Fiske Guide to Colleges is everything you need to know about finding the right school.
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