The St. Paul school board voted Friday, Oct. 30, to offer early retirement to English-language teachers, rather than terminate 16 teachers midyear.
The move came after a raucous meeting earlier this month when teachers pushed back on a proposal for what they called “unprecedented” midyear cuts. The district had introduced the measure after a larger than expected decline in English language learner enrollment following Operation Metro Surge.
St. Paul Public Schools has 542 fewer English learners than it projected in January — which corresponds to $4.9 million less in revenue. District officials had said the rare midyear cuts were necessary to avoid sinking below a key financial benchmark.
The early retirement package represents a compromise reached with the St. Paul Federation of Educators. Superintendent Stacie Stanley said her team had put 45 hours into looking at additional options in a 10-day period, including many hours with the union.
The plan is contingent on at least seven English language teachers opting for the early retirement incentives. If not enough teachers sign up, the teachers union has agreed to forego their usual extra pay when teachers have to sub for a colleague during their prep period. Stanley said that so far, 10 teachers have expressed interest, though they have not yet begun the process of filing for retirement.
The early retirements would save the district a maximum of about $1.1 million. The remaining budget gap would be closed by spending $2 million of the fund balance, saving $1.1 million by not filling vacant positions, and gaining about $1 million by re-enrolling about 90 former students who have been recruited to return.
Board member Yusef Carrillo, who authored a motion at the Oct. 20 meeting directing district officials to look into alternatives to midyear terminations, praised the work and creativity that Stanley’s team and the union had put in to come up with another solution.
“I think this should be a good model for going forward in partnership,” he said.
At the same time, some board members expressed unease about the district’s financial situation. District policy requires St. Paul Public Schools to keep 5% of its budget in what is called the fund balance. That represents the equivalent of 18 days of cash on hand. If the district dips below that benchmark, it can affect the district’s financial standing.
The budget the school board approved in June left the fund balance at 5.26%. Under the new plan, if the minimum of seven teachers retire, the fund balance will stand at 5.01%.
“It really does require us to pause and be really thoughtful and intentional about some of the additional cost savings that we may need to incur throughout the rest of the year, knowing that it’s no secret that costs continue to go up for all of us,” said school board treasurer Carlo Franco.
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School board member Brandon Lowe praised the work to reach the compromise, but said it was too uncertain. He was the lone no vote.
“We’re still relying on uncertain things in incredibly uncertain times,” he said. “We know that we are taking ourselves so close to the edge of the fund balance, and we are doing so without certainty that we are going to get all of the savings that we see here.”
Board member Halla Henderson, who, like Lowe, will be stepping down in January, praised the collaboration, but said the school board would need to prepare the community for more difficult decisions ahead.
“There is no education if this district is not able to stay financially afloat,” she said. “We don’t have any other wiggle room. There’s nothing to pass off to the next budget cycle.”
The board approved the plan on a 6-1 vote. Union members in the audience stood and applauded.
Gratitude, relief, and preparing for the next crisis
After the meeting, both educators and district administrators expressed gratitude and relief for the new plan.
Sarah Schmidt de Carranza, the district’s executive director of multilingual learning, said she was relieved that more jobs would be preserved to teach English learners in the new plan.
Rainbow Espinosa, an English language teacher at Washington Technology Magnet High School whose job was slated to be cut under the previous plan, said the district’s proposal to terminate the teachers who had been supporting the kids targeted by Operation Metro Surge had felt personal.
“There used to be a saying that EL kids are everyone’s kids,” she said. “And all of a sudden, when it comes to the budget, EL kids are only our kids.”
Though she questioned why the collaboration hadn’t begun before the rollout of a contentious plan, she praised Carrillo for pushing for another path, and district officials and the union for finding one.
“Best outcome we could have hoped for,” she said.
Erica Schatzlein, the union’s lead negotiator, said this outcome allowed teachers who had worked with thousands of immigrant students over decades to give back to their community one more time.
“I’m really pleased that our members who will be leaving us midyear are really experienced members who are going to be making that choice at the end of their career, versus people who are just starting who are going to be forced out,” she said. “That’s a big difference.”
Stanley, the superintendent, emphasized that behind the enrollment decline numbers were students that the district missed. She said attendance teams had gone out knocking on doors to find them.
“We heard from landlords, we heard from neighbors: they’re not here,” she said.
She said that she had reached out to her team at 4 a.m. the morning after the Oct. 20 school board meeting, which ended at 11:30 p.m., and instructed them to clear their calendars to develop more ideas. They started brainstorming with the union that same day.
Stanley noted that offering early retirement to teachers is unusual — and so was collaborating with the union to find a solution to a midyear budget shortfall.
“That partnership is always going to be important,” she said. “There are just some really difficult decisions that will have to be made that might not be collaborative.”
Other districts around Minnesota are facing similar declines in English language learners. Minneapolis Public Schools said this week that its fall enrollment data showed 1,000 fewer students than it had budgeted for, about 900 of whom were English learners — resulting in a $12.9 million revenue shortfall. The Minneapolis school board will discuss options to address that shortfall in November.
