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September 17, 2012

Gibault makes cuts to education program

Campus has reduced teaching staff, cut pay, put assistant principal back in classroom

Sue Loughlin The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — State funding cuts and fewer residents have prompted Gibault Children’s Services to make cuts to its education program, interim executive director Michele Madley said.

Gibault, which operates Holy Cross School at its juvenile residential treatment campus in Terre Haute, has reduced its teaching staff, cut the pay of some teachers and placed its assistant principal back into the classroom, Madley said Friday.

The school has gone from 10 to seven teachers and it also has a principal, she said. Other Gibault staff assist with behavior management issues.

This year, Gibault has had to cut $350,000 from its education budget, which includes salaries and operational costs.

Overall funding cuts have totaled $750,000 this year, which have affected the entire operation at the Terre Haute campus, she said.

All programs, and positions, have been re-evaluated.

“Due to the fact the school is our most costly program, we needed to evaluate how we were going to be an on-grounds, accredited school but with less of a budget,” she said.

At the same time, cuts have occurred “in all of our programs,” Madley said. “Education was the last to be impacted. We did not wish to impact education until the very last possible moment because we find our educational component to be very valuable.”

In the past, Gibault has attempted to seek a sponsor for a public charter school, but those efforts have not been successful. Charter schools are funded by the state in the same way that traditional public schools are funded, which comes primarily in the form of state formula aid.

  Gibault currently has about 65 residents, although it can serve up to 120. “As an organization, we have to re-evaluate how many teachers we need and how many administrators we need,” Madley said.

As to pay cuts of some teaching staff, she declined to be specific but said “we evaluated job descriptions as well as pay ranges.” Cuts were not across-the-board

In addition, the Vigo County School Corp. recently reassigned a Title 1 teacher — at the teacher’s request — who had been at Gibault to a VCSC school assignment, instead, Superintendent Dan Tanoos confirmed this week.

He declined to be specific as to the reasons, citing it as a personnel issue, but he did say it was “due to an issue brought to our attention.”

Asked whether it related to safety concerns, he said he could not comment.

The district has had an employee assigned there because it is the administrator of Title 1 funds in Vigo County, including those that go to parochial and private schools.

In a subsequent interview, Mick Newport, VCSC director of human resources, said that VCSC and Gibault staff have met. The district will soon send another Title 1 teacher and an aide to Gibault; the aide is new.

Gibault will do safety training for those employees, who are funded through Gibault’s share of Title 1 funds. Also, the teacher and aide will have no more than three Gibault students in a class period at any one time, and the teacher will have a two-way radio, Newport said.

Madley emphasized that the $750,000 in funding cuts have affected the entire Terre Haute campus, where “we’ve had to reduce positions and pay levels and change responsibilities.” No one has received a pay increase in the past four years, she said.

The Terre Haute campus has about 130 employees, she said.

While Madley indicated in June that Gibault planned to hire 25 staff, she said that related to replacement staff. Turnover rates are high for direct care staff in a residential treatment facility, she said. Gibault has hired three additional safety/security staff in response to community concerns.

Asked whether staff have any safety concerns, “It’s our primary focus on a daily basis to keep clients as well as staff safe.”

When new staff members come on board, Gibault lets them know during training they are working with “incredibly difficult clientele. … ‘This may not be an occupation that is for you and you will need to decide that,’” Madley said.

Madley said the juvenile residential treatment program is “taking the most difficult kids in the state that weren’t even able to function in a public school. Are there higher risks here? Most definitely.”

She said the school is not at risk of closing at this time. But if the state handed down another major budget reduction, “we would have to go back to the drawing table.”

 

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