The main money saver of about $21 million was closing 10 campuses and consolidating schools, along with redrawing district lines. But with the projected $49 million of debt by the end of the 2025-2026 school year, AISD looked to other ways to significantly cut the budget. The proposed plan will take away certain tools for teachers, such as planning periods, change school schedules, cut budget for programs by 15-30 percent and look to possibly cut programs entirely. In this attempt to save money so as to not have state intervention, AISD is forced to put their students’ and staff’s quality of school into jeopardy. 

Because of the recent staff freeze, there are many staff vacancies at McCallum and they are most likely not going to be filled. Instead, AISD proposes to take away some if not all planning periods for teachers in order for the current staff to fill in the class needs. While I understand that those class slots need to be filled in order to ensure students’ education, they are actually taking away from the quality of education by not letting teachers have adequate amounts of planning time. As teachers are already overworked, piling more work by adding more subjects to learn how to teach and actually teach will eventually cause the quality of education to lower as teachers are spread thinner and thinner. Since there is a correlation between educator’s teaching and test scores, standardized test scores will also lower, further lowering the amount of state dollars we receive. 

The average teacher already falls below the average annual salary per person and far below the cost of living in Austin by about $40,000. Although Indeed’s statistics are mostly averages, the average being so low means that the majority of teachers are never reaching that top range where they could live comfortably in Austin. As stipends, an additional amount of money for teachers, can contribute up to $7,000 for teachers that are bilingual, working with life skills students or hold a higher university degree, cutting them would put teachers even further below the cost of living in Austin. Additionally, making teachers work more hours for less pay just doesn’t make sense, and will again result in less teachers and therefore less effective school instruction.

The overall amount of focus of teachers being divided into too many different subjects is already a lot on the teachers, but increasing the class sizes due to the hiring freeze and consolidation will create a worse learning environment. While the effect of the closing of schools will not affect McCallum as much as other schools, such as with Lamar or Dobie Middle School, the proposed elimination of planning periods will still not make up for all of the staff vacancies. As our class size is already usually around 30 people, increasing the class size to up to 40 students will decrease engagement and possibly even increase discipline issues, further leading to a lowered quality of learning. 

In addition to possibly cutting teachers’ stipends and planning periods, AISD is also looking to possibly change our block schedule.  While teachers at McCallum have been notified through meetings about the consideration of a seven period day, Segura has not specifically mentioned anything. At McCallum at least, we already got our schedules and some of us, especially in the earlier years of high school, need those eight periods to fulfill our graduation or fine arts academy requirements. At LASA, they also need those eight periods for freshman and sophomore years, unless they took away their one elective slot. While every class would meet everyday and cumulatively equate to 90 minutes across the course of a week, it would be impossible to really focus for less than an hour on one subject. In the same study, they found that there was less work for students to do outside of class with the A-B block schedule versus a schedule with all classes on one day. Just imagine the sheer amount of homework, exponential exhaustion and stress for students in a seven period setting.

AISD also plans to implement a 15-30 percent budget cut for all programs and reevaluate some programs entirely. While we have dealt with budget cuts before, 15-30 percent is a significant amount of our budgets. Cutting down on charter buses would be an acceptable way to cut down our spending, but investing our funds into the programs that we love is a necessity.  As a fine arts academy student, I can say for certain I would not be attending McCallum if not for the academy and found my passion for music. This extends past the fine arts into electives of every core category and sports as well. This theme is also reflected in an article by Education World, in which the article suggests electives give students more motivation to go to school and keep them more engaged. Taking away more of these programs that aren’t a state ‘necessity’, even if it is just due to the hiring freeze, would therefore greatly dissatisfy the students and disadvantage educators in trying to get students more engaged. As stated previously, this would snowball into worse test scores and less state funding. 

These proposed budget cuts are not worth risking teachers’ sanity, the potential of a worse education and loss of essential programs. Because teachers are already overworked and underpaid for the cost of living in Austin, cutting their stipends, adding additional classes and taking away planning periods will only exacerbate the issue. This strain on the teachers, combined with the possibility of schedule changes, will create a worse classroom environment that doesn’t promote learning. Electives and other additional programs are essential for students to thrive and keep them motivated throughout high school. Although AISD is severely in debt and needs to solve the problem, compromising the happiness and success of the students and faculty is not an option.