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Schools

Farmington School Workers Plead with Board

Dozens share their stories, including a father who relates a harrowing experience.

Kurt Schmidt approached the microphone in 's Hunt Auditorium Tuesday night and thanked the Board of Education for allowing him to explain why he’s so strongly opposed to privatizing non-educational support services in the school district.

It’s not just that he works for the district as a bus driver, which he has done since 2009, after staying home to raise children for 13 years. And it’s not just that he’s worried about his job and the jobs of his colleagues.

It’s that when he thinks about a very cold day in February 2009, an afternoon when he’d been back in the workforce for just six weeks, he is still visibly shaken and unashamed of his wavering voice and tears in his eyes.

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That was the day Schmidt's 5-year-old daughter didn’t get off Mrs. Near’s school bus at the end of the school day. It was the first time in eight years that one of Schmidt’s children didn’t make it home safely and on time, he said.

Schmidt was working when he heard the dispatcher alert drivers to check their buses for young Elizabeth Schmidt. Kurt Schmidt’s mind raced as he diligently finished his own route and headed back to the bus yard lounge, where drivers gathered after their shifts to await word about the missing kindergarten student. It was 4:28 p.m. Elizabeth should have been home 20 minutes earlier.

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The bus drivers were looking for Elizabeth, and staff had just started, Schmidt said.

But she was already halfway home. She’d crossed busy Halsted and Eleven Mile Roads when her oldest brother's regular afternoon bus driver, Mrs. Oliver, spotted the tot on Spring Lane, where she knew the girl would be if she tried to make it home alone.

Mrs. Oliver drove the little girl home.

“Mrs. Near was right behind her,” Schmidt said.

He shared his story during public comment at the Board of Education meeting, attended by scores of school employees who earlier held a rally in front of the Richard B. Jones Academic Center on North's campus. The rally supported workers who fear losing their jobs, after the board in February approved a request for proposals (RFPs) to investigate outsourcing non-instructional staff. Officials will review proposals received at their April 26 meeting, which will also be held at North Farmington to accommodate the higher-than-usual attendance.

Later, Schmidt said, he learned what happened to his daughter. A substitute teacher escorted her to the parent pickup area, rather than to the bus pickup lane.

Elizabeth waited as other children were picked up by parents, but her dad never came. After all the other children were gone, she tried opening some of the school doors, but they already been locked.

“Tired and hungry, she started walking home,” Schmidt said.

He worries what will happen if all the support staff becomes a low-paid, under-trained, unattached short-term workforce. He said he’s certain that without the experience and knowledge and attachment to the community in-house school employees have, the safety of children like his daughter will be jeopardized.

Dozens – 39 to be exact – of employees, parents and community members asked to speak to the board, many of them echoing Schmidt’s concerns.  “How can you put a price on a child’s safety?” was a common question.

But services do have a price, and under the weight of shrinking funding from the state, the board will consider proposals from contractors, which could save as much as $4 million per year, according to initial estimates.

Board members and Superintendent Susan Zurvalec have expressed their frustration over the lack of funding and the choices that they’re forced to consider.

Zurvalec said that in 1994, when voters approved Proposal A, they believed they had entered a covenant with the state.

The covenant “included state funding K-12 (education) in exchange for (school districts) giving up the right to ask our local citizens for operating funds,” she said. She thinks the governor’s proposed budget, which diverts $900 million from the school aid budget away from K-12 public education, to help fund higher education “violates that covenant and it violates Proposal A.”

It’s a move that board president Howard Wallach called “not only absurd; it’s frankly criminal in my mind.”

Dave Workman, Farmington Education Association president, said this certainly isn’t the first time the district has faced budget problems. But in the past, he said, the administration and board negotiated with the unions, and were able to achieve additional fund balances.

Even last year, he said, a year which was considered critical, the district achieved an $11 million fund balance, which would not have been possible without the collective bargaining units.

But now, as the district has a $29 million fund balance, he suggested to the board that it’s time to agree to use the money for its intended purpose – to pay the district’s employees.

“I’m worried about more cuts, more discouragement,” which he said “creates a situation where the sky is falling, then (the district) put millions of dollars back in the bank.”

The board will review bids at its April 26 meeting. It may vote to accept or reject proposals as early as May 10.

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