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The Westinghouse Alumni Association made a 40-point plan public to save Pittsburgh Public Schools more than 100 million dollars. Here are some of those plans. We'll talk about them on the TV show at PCTV21 in May, 2011.
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Westinghouse High School Alumni
40 point plan
$100 million saving
Benefits to Pittsburgh Public Schools
Five + years and decling enrollment
PPS Board,
Superintendent,
PFT,
administration and
community have had repeated warnings.
Back to Basics:
Reality-Based Budgeting:
No tax increase.
Cost per pupil for PPS is greater than $20,000 per year.
Cancel contracts with Foundations.
Both Broad and Gates Foundations have influence.
They created unsustainable functions.
Their plans have been nothing but a cancer.
Mark Roosevelt:
Pay for his own life insurance coverage.
Estimated savings $200,000.
Eliminate the Board Office secretary
Other PA school districts do not have this position.
Estimated savings: $100,000.
Nix the PPS internal auditor:
Pgh City Controller is automatically the School Controller.
A much smaller crew of three could report to the elected Board.
Estimated Savings $500,000.
Consolidate collection of real estate taxes with Allegheny County
May require an act of the State.
Estimated savings $1 million.
Eliminate external communications consultants.
Estimated savings $1-Million.
Eliminate the Research office
Approximately 8 staff.
Keep two to distribute and manage required and desired
testing documents.
Estimated savings $500,000.
Auction all closed buildings.
Okay to dump every property for a penny.
Save soft cost of keeping them.
Estimated savings $1,000,000.
Streamline academic admin into four departments
Elementary Schools,
Secondary Schools,
Pupil Services and
Curriculum/Professional Development.
Eliminate all managers with less than 7 direct reports.
Estimated savings $2,000,000.
Elimination of the office of strategic planning with Derrick Lopez.
Use OpenOffice.org
Use OpenOffice or Google as the platform for word processing, spreadsheets, etc.
Estimated savings $600,000.
Merge Oliver with Perry or Langley
Oliver is too small (student population) to offer the kids a
meaningful education.
Langley is air conditioned.
Estimated savings $700,000.
Keep Obama at ReizensteinAvoid the cost of moving to Peabody.
Or, move Obama to Westinghouse, which could free Reizenstein to be the consolidated administration building.
Or, sell Reizenstein (with the funds being used to pay down debt in accordance with the tax code).
Invite all unions back to the bargaining table
Find creative methods to save money,
Include wage & benefit concessions.
Estimated savings $4-million.
Invite Bordering Districts to Merge
Include Sto Rox, Wilkinsburg,
If just two take the offer, the estimated savings is $1-
million.
Wrap up (3 more slides):
Eliminate the contracted solicitor services and hire two staff attorneys.
Realign school times to populate existing yellow bus routes. $1-million.
Eliminate the gifted center. (Boo!) $2-million.
Cancel the contract for lobbying. Saves $100,000.
Eliminate all reading/math coaches. Use qualified tutors. $5-million.
Increase future retiree contributions for health care benefits.
Eliminate CAS and PSP classes for gifted secondary education. Use AP and IB only. Saves $5-million.
Cancel employment of all Broad residents (approximately 5), Aprox $500K.
Raise student to teacher ratio from 14:1 to 20:1, keeping smaller class sizes in K, 1 and 2, plus special education and alternative education. This may require further school consolidation.
Eliminate the PELA program to train new principals and the Academies to train new teachers.
Keep the Student Achievement Center and get rid of CEP. Estimated savings $2-million.
Consider a four day school week with increased hours per day. For transportation and facilities, saves $4-million.
Adopt a 10 year cycle for curriculum renewal. First PPS had Kaplan, then the Assistant Superintendent tinkered with curriculum and rewrite what had just been done. Do it once, do it right, do minor maintenance, but leave it alone for 10 years. Estimated savings $1-million.
Eliminate consultants.
Consolidate PPS career and technical education with surrounding districts., Saves $1-million.
Expect a reduction for PPS payments for charter school tuition rate. Estimated savings $8-million.
Closing:
The projected annual savings exceeds
$100 million.
