Northwest Independent School District is taking drastic steps to balance its finances, cutting staff and increasing class sizes as it deals with a $16 million budget deficit.
During a school board meeting on Monday, district officials outlined the budget cuts that had been approved last month to address the district’s budget shortfall. The changes, which will take effect next school year, mainly focus on reducing the number of full-time staff and increasing the number of students per teacher.
The move will affect students and educators across the district’s 14 cities in Tarrant, Denton, and Wise counties.
The approved plan will also include a freeze on hiring new full-time staff at the elementary level and a cut of nearly 60 full-time positions at the middle and high school levels. Additionally, employees in athletics and fine arts will face a 15% reduction in staff, which will save the district another $1.1 million, reported Fox 4 KDFW.
For elementary schools, the number of students per class in grades 2 through 4 will increase from 22 to 24. For middle and high schools, the number of students a teacher sees per day will rise to 180, up from 165.
In addition to cuts in staffing, the district also announced the cancellation or reduction of assets for several programs, including AVID, a college preparation program designed for students who are first-generation college hopefuls.
To help bridge the financial gap, the district is exploring other additional cost-saving measures, such as cutting back on field trips, reducing outsourced services like custodial and groundskeeping work, or even imposing a 10% cut to campus budgets across the district, per Fox.
The district reportedly hopes to finalize reassignments and reallocations by April 7.
With enrollment numbers declining across the region, more difficult decisions may be on the horizon for other school districts in North Texas.
“It’s super dark. It’s really sad. Some of the best young teachers I know lost their gigs. And some fantastic teachers who care a lot are now going to be on two campuses instead of one. A lot of kids are about to lose their favorite teachers,” Ethan Munger, a Northwest High School teacher, told CBS.