Loss of young families threatens more than jobs; unless we can support young households, the city’s quality of life for young and old will suffer

By Jill Franko

There have been many questions after the recent approval of the reduction in force at the Ashland School District. How did the district know they were losing enrollment but not plan ahead? Why did the district hire more teachers while enrollment was declining? Why did the district wait so long before addressing the overspending? I hope to answer a few of these questions while avoiding more confusion. 

As mentioned in this Ashland.news article, interdistrict transfers were discontinued by the state in 2018-19. In anticipation of the loss of enrollment (around 300 students), the district started planning for this new reality in 2019. Rezoning the district to ensure all of our neighborhood schools were balanced was the first step. Additional steps included right-sizing the district — meaning increasing class sizes as class sizes had dropped to around 17 for younger grades and 21 for middle grades — and decreasing staff. COVID halted all of these plans. During the COVID pandemic, all public schools struggled to maintain even basic services while adhering to stricter guidelines. Our students, our families and our staff struggled. 

Thankfully, funding flooded into public schools from the federal government to support additional needs caused by the pandemic. This additional funding meant not only could we delay the inevitable, but we could hire more staff. It was designated specifically to support our kids.

So we did. We hired additional behavioral health specialists. We hired on-site counselors and student advocates. We hired support for our teachers by increasing our educational assistants. We did whatever was necessary to help our kids through one of the toughest times in history.

We knew these funds would dry up at some point, and we would have to exercise layoffs. This was communicated often, and the board understood that the day would come. We were also told that natural attrition — retirements, teachers moving away, etc. — would help us reach the required numbers.

So when the additional COVID-19 pandemic funds dried up in 2022-23, the district decided to place a hiring freeze and wait to see how close natural attrition brought us. These measures took us from 87 staff funded with COVID-19 pandemic funds to around 30. We needed to be closer to 15. So, in many ways, it worked. Instead of issuing a massive layoff in 2022-23, we were able to wait and support our students longer, leading to a much smaller reduction in force now. The funding for this year was correctly projected. We budgeted for 2,530 students, we have about 2550, and we received funding for the 2,550. The revenues were as projected, but the spending was not.

So, did the district handle things correctly? Was there communication and collaboration with each school to keep staff updated on what was coming? Was there continuous input with feedback loops to inform the district office on cuts that made sense for each building? Are those feedback loops ongoing? Did the district wait too long to exercise the reduction in force? Did the timing add anxiety, increase stress and decrease morale in an unnecessary way?

These are all reasonable questions, with different answers, depending on whom you speak with. Much of the criticism is fair. The truth is, our kids needed and still need all the support they can get. The district saw it appropriate to stretch those support services for as long as possible, even when it meant dipping into our ending fund balance. The idea that this was avoidable is just not accurate. Layoffs were always going to happen. And also, remember, we are not a for-profit company. We are a publicly funded education system whose sole purpose is to support kids in their education academically, socially, emotionally and sometimes even with basic needs. I don’t know another time in my lifetime that the need was so pervasive that it justified a dip in the ending fund balance as these past few years. And yet, we now need to adjust. 

Per capita, Ashland has 6% fewer households with school-age kids than the state and county; that’s the equivalent of two of our elementary schools, or the number of kids in our Helman and Walker campuses combined. Roughly 500 schoolchildren are not on Ashland rolls due to lack of affordability, jobs and childcare. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to build our community back with more families in Ashland. It just means we have to try harder.

And yet, whether you have children still in school or not, this is a community problem. We know adults live longer, happier lives in communities with a rich balance of all ages and demographics. Our kids are resilient. They are learning to twist and turn with the winds of a post-COVID world.

But your life, my life and our lives need to twist and turn with our children to evolve this community into one that welcomes and supports families. If the community continues down the path of what is projected, we will become a retirement community whose property values, life expectancies and quality of life for all its residents decrease — UNLESS. In the words of the famous Dr. Seuss — “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot. Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

If you want to be involved in attracting and retaining families in the Ashland School District, please email me at [email protected] to join our increasing enrollment committee and help us continue to be the community we all fell in love with, the one with all ages living in a thriving, supportive, and safe community that our children call home and return to with their children, for generations to come.

Jill Franko is a member of the Ashland School District Board of Directors. This letter is from her as an individual, not on behalf of the board.