The Syracuse City School District is in a state of flux. After consistently underperforming in the classroom and state testing, the district was forced to make some major changes to try and jump-start low-performing schools.

Over the past five months, the district has hired a new superintendent, cut 463 jobs, transferred 158 employees, closed a middle school, renegotiated contracts for all types of goods and services, and reduced contractual expenditures, said the district’s Chief Financial Officer Suzanne Slack.

Slack said the district’s budget was cut significantly for the 2011-12 school year and one of the reasons is because the Syracuse city budget was cut as well.

‘One way to get through the budget crises was to reduce funding, the biggest one being for education,’ Slack said.

The 2011-12 district budget is around $335 million — about $20 million less than the 2010-11 budget of $355 million — and puts the district at the 2006-07 spending amount, Slack said.

With the budget cuts, the district was forced to make some significant changes. School Board President Richard Strong said the 463 job cuts were strictly for financial reasons.

‘There’s always been an argument that we were overstaffed, so the job cuts were purely a financial move,’ Strong said.

As far as transferring teachers within the district, Strong said they had no choice.

‘When you have consistently low-performing schools, you move staff around. It’s just the way it goes,’ Strong said. ‘It’s not like I have a backup quarterback. If I have to remove an English teacher to go to another school, that’s what I have to do. I can’t fire that person because we don’t have that ability.’

And the state Department of Education brought more bad news for the district Aug. 8 by releasing state standardized test scores for third through eighth graders.

On average, only 22.5 percent of Syracuse City School District students in grades three through eight met or exceeded the state standard on the English tests, while 25.3 percent of those students reached or exceeded the state target in math.

Syracuse had lower test scores than other urban districts across the state, including Buffalo and Rochester. In Rochester, 24.4 percent of third through eighth graders met the state target in English and 29.4 percent hit the mark in math. Statewide, 52.8 percent met the standard in English, while 63.3 percent reached or surpassed the target in math.

But Gerald Mager, associate dean of the Syracuse University’s School of Education, said that the district’s poor performance is not something that has happened overnight and, in turn, will take time to fix.

‘Kids spend 12 to 14 years in school and their patterns of achievement are set early on in their experience,’ Mager said. ‘When a child reaches 18 and is not in college, it didn’t happen when they turned 17. It’s all about long-term success.’

With the changes made over the past five months, all eyes have turned to the district and its new superintendent, Sharon Contreras.

Strong said Contreras has a 100-day plan to jump-start the district and start improving the under-performing schools. He said it is her responsibility to come in and evaluate the situation throughout the next 100 days and figure out what needs to be done.

In Contreras’ 100-day plan, as detailed on the district’s website, she is going to ‘meet with the district’s instructional leadership team to discuss achievement data’ and ‘identify chronically under-performing schools, conduct a root cause analysis for low performance, then determine a course of corrective action.’

Strong emphasized that keeping the students involved in school-related activities under teacher supervision is imperative for the students’ success.

‘Extending the school year through summer camps is key,’ Strong said. ‘The longer they have them the more successful they will be.’

Strong also mentioned the importance of parental involvement and how it needs to be stronger moving forward to improve the probability of student success.

‘An engaged parent should know what their job requirements are,’ Strong said. ‘Get their child to bed on time and help discipline the child to keep them focused on tasks.’

hawentz@syr.edu

Published on August 30, 2011 at 12:00 pm