Over 100 staffers were part of a slate of reductions passed in a split 4-3 vote at Cincinnati Public Schools’ board meeting on June 22.
The cuts are made up of 81 central office positions, 12 social workers, 10 assistant principals and eight counselors – all made in an attempt to make up for a $58.6 million deficit. Five furlough days for administrators and teachers totaling $7.5 million in savings, district Treasurer Mike Gustin estimated, was also approved.
The scaleback of social services could hit hard in a district that’s seen a nearly doubled population of homeless students and has one of the highest rates of chronically absent students in the state.
Rounding out the initial set of cuts is a 10% reduction in non-personnel school items like classroom supplies and the elimination of the district’s International Baccalaureate (IB) programs, currently offered at Roberts Academy, Evanston Junior High School and Gilbert A. Dater High School.
Board members Kari Armbruster, Eve Bolton, Jim Crosset and board president Brandon Craig made up the four votes in favor of the reductions. Member Ben Lindy was the single ‘no’ vote.
Members Kendra Mapp and Kareem Moncree-Moffett voted in favor with exceptions for the loss of the counselor and social worker positions. Mapp added a specific exception to the cuts affecting CPS’s procurement team housed in central office.
School board said it’s ‘confused,’ ‘disappointed’ about budget timeline
While Monday night’s vote finalized a round of reductions, the budget is not technically finished, district leaders said.
Each and every cut coming to the region’s largest district will be finalized at the board’s next meeting on July 13, giving the district time to calculate how Monday night’s round of cuts will impact the rest of the budget book, Gustin said.
The timeline lapse caused confusion among some board members, who expected to vote on a complete, finalized budget at the June 22 meeting, before the fiscal year officially ends on June 30.
“It’s quite disappointing to be here at the last board meeting in June to not have a recommendation for a balanced budget,” Lindy said at the top of the budget discussion.
“I think we owe our staff an apology,” Moncree-Moffett said about the delay, adding that the district has had months to iron out the budget cuts.
Board President Craig said the confusion is unwarranted given that they’ve been reviewing and discussing these potential cuts for weeks.
“None of this is new,” Craig said about the cuts.
Referring to previous, less-impactful reductions, Craig said, “We have to own the fact that we’ve made decisions over the last two to three years that have landed us where we are now.”
Despite the delay, CPS is still meeting legal parameters around a budget timeline.
That’s because, per Ohio Revised Code, a district’s final budget vote consists of passing an annual appropriation resolution, which outlines what the district plans to spend for the upcoming fiscal year, starting on July 1. The board unanimously voted to approve its 2026-27 annual appropriation at Monday night’s meeting.
The resolution shows how the district plans to spend its $970 million budget by breaking down which dollars are coming from which type of fund, like its Title I and Title IV funds, its permanent improvement fund and food services fund.
That resolution can be viewed in full here.
Teachers union says board is placing ‘politics ahead of students’
Board member Lindy made up the single ‘no’ vote after proposing a non-supported amendment that the district spend the same or more of its federal Title II dollars as it did last year on teachers’ curriculum professional development training.
Lindy’s emphasis on curriculum, specifically the district’s contracts with third-party vendors like i-Ready, has spurred pushback from some Cincinnati Federation of Teachers members who say the board is not entrusting them to do their jobs.
Jillian Whitaker, a district parent and teacher, said at the last meeting on June 8 that when she attempts to use i-Ready and other digital curriculum, “Students literally turn them off and walk away and it counts as a session.”
Whether he’d support a new-money levy in the fall is also dependent on seeing an improvement in implementing curriculum, Lindy previously said.
The teachers union made their uncertainty around private curriculum vendors clear in a resolution passed May 13.
In a copy of the resolution shared with The Enquirer, the union stated it “publicly opposes efforts to undermine democratic governance structures, privatize public education, or devalue the professional labor of educators” through third-party vendors.
How did we get here?
This year marks the third consecutive year CPS has had to make reductions to its operations, Gustin said.
For weeks, district officials and board members have discussed the handful of staff reductions, namely the cuts to 12 social workers, three nurses and eight counselors. The stripping of social services faced significant criticism, prompting hours of feedback from district staff and parents during public comment.
Maddie McKinney, a counselor at Gilbert A. Dater High School, said during public comment at the June 8 meeting that the number of suicide risk assessments at her school has more than doubled in recent years.
The consequences of the reductions will “fall on our students,” McKinney said.
CPS joins districts across the state cobbling together budgets in a turbulent funding landscape characterized by sweeping property tax reform, state funds that stray from the Fair School Funding Formula and shrinking enrollment thanks to private school vouchers.
In fact, Cincinnati is one of the more than 120 Ohio public school districts that are projecting negative cash balances by 2029 – the worst rate since the Great Recession.
The sweeping reductions were not made lightly by Superintendent Murphy, she previously said.
“If you ask me what keeps me up at night, this keeps me up at night,” Murphy said. “It’s not me saying ‘I don’t value counselors or social workers’ … but we have to have money and we don’t have enough money to maintain where we are today.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Over 100 personnel cut in Cincinnati Public Schools’ board budget vote
Reporting by Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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By Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
