Marysville Exempted Village School District plans to cut 30 faculty and staff positions next school year if a levy on the May ballot fails.
While voting unanimously to cut 24.5 teaching positions and another 5.5 classified staff positions as of May 23, the somber Marysville school board on Thursday stressed the reductions will only happen if their levy fails.
“This is only if the levy does not pass in May, and we have to make these known and be very transparent to not only the professionals that we have, but also to the community and our parents,” said school board member Jermaine Ferguson.
The reductions include four art teachers, four music teachers, three physical education teachers, three high school math teachers and two middle school foreign language teachers. The district will also cut positions for a middle school family and consumer science, middle school fab lab and a middle school robotics teacher, as well as a high school science and a high school social studies teacher. The half position is listed as high school English.
A list of impacted employees notes that some teachers will be reassigned, while others have already resigned or retired as of the end of the school year.
The reductions to classified positions include 4.5 elementary technology aides and a high school aide. One of the affected staff members has already resigned.
At Thursday’s school board meeting, board president Bill Keck said it was a “sad, sad day.”
"This has no reflection on these teachers' abilities and on their performance whatsoever. In fact, some of them are some of the top and probably the top in the state,” Keck said.
Board vice president Nan Savidge noted that the same was true for the classified staff.
"Classified staff often are the gap fillers within any school operating system,” Savidge said.
Last November, Marysville voters rejected a 5.5-mill operating levy. The district has placed it back on the ballot for the May 6 primary. The district reports it will cost homeowners about $16 per month, or $192 per year, for a home valued at $100,000.
In Nov. 2022, Marysville residents voted down an 8.4-mill emergency operating levy. If that levy had passed, the levy would have cost taxpayers $294 per $100,000 of their property value, but would have helped the school avoid a more than $9.6 million operating deficit. The district said after the levy’s failure that they would have to make around $2 million in cuts.
Thursday night, board members also approved shortening class time for elementary and intermediate students in the district, should this May's levy fail. Without the levy, the instructional day at the elementary schools and Creekview Intermediate School will be shortened by 30 minutes each day for the 2025-2026 school year.
Creekview's new school day would run from 9:05 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. and the elementary schools would have class from 9:45 a.m. to 3:55 p.m.
