Assistant Principals Eyed For School Cuts

By RONNIE BLAIR
The Tampa Tribune
Published: June 4, 2008

LAND O´ LAKES - Assistant principals may have only themselves to blame if people think they are expendable.

Katie Lail, the assistant principal at West Zephyrhills Elementary, said whenever a teacher, a student or a parent asks whether she has a minute to spare, she says she does.

“Yes, we have a minute,” Lail said. “We are constantly giving those minutes.”

Assistant principals are one of many areas that have come under scrutiny as the Pasco County School District figures out how to address a projected $16 million shortfall for 2008-09.

When school board member Marge Whaley drew up her list of ways to save money, she included a teacher´s suggestion that the district replace one assistant principal at each high school with a paraprofessional who could handle discipline.

Whaley´s list also included the suggestion that the district consider cutting the number of days assistant principals at elementary schools work.

At a school board workshop Tuesday, principals and assistant principals explained why they don´t think reducing the number of assistant principals, or their hours, is a good idea.

Principal Ray Bonti at Wiregrass Ranch High said his school has 200 employees and anticipates about 2,000 students for 2008-09.

He said eliminating one of the four assistant principal positions would increase the remaining administrators´ workloads by 25 percent and “change the culture and the climate” of the school.

“We don´t have room to add 25 percent more work in our day,” he said.

The administrators arrive about 6:30 or 6:45 a.m. each day and typically work into the evening, he said. Bonti or one of his assistants attends every school function, and they all attend Friday night football games, he said.

Michelle Williams, an assistant principal at Hudson High, said a discipline paraprofessional couldn´t take on all the duties of an assistant principal. When there´s a problem, parents and teachers want to be able to speak to an administrator, she said.

After the workshop, Whaley said she doesn´t think any assistant principal should be eliminated. She said the idea came from a teacher who sent her an e-mail, so she included it in her list because it was different from the other suggestions she was getting from school district employees.

“Our schools are so overcrowded that they are staffed minimally at the school level,” Whaley said.

But she said the district needs to find a way to help school employees and the public understand how important assistant principals are to their schools.

“Obviously, the teacher who wrote to me didn´t know what her assistant principal did,” Whaley said.

United School Employees of Pasco also has suggested the district look at administrative costs as a way to cut spending.

“I don´t think anyone is going to dispute how hard administrators work and how onerous their jobs are,” said Lynne Webb, president of the union.

But the people who didn´t attend the workshop - teachers and other school employees - work just as hard at jobs that are just as onerous, Webb said.

She said the discussions about administrative cuts seemed to focus on “reasons why we can´t instead of reasons why we can.”

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