The Edwardsville school board meeting Monday night at Liberty Middle School was so packed that officials had to ask some people to watch in an overflow room.
Most of those in attendance were there to voice their opposition to the dismissal of 16 non-tenured teachers for the next school year.
They went home disappointed, as the board voted 4-3 in favor of the cuts. Jill Bertels, Jennifer Brumback, Kristen Pfund and Bob Paty voted yes, while Teri Dalla Riva, Lynne Sanderson and Scott Ahart voted no. Dalla Riva and Ahart are seeking another term in the April 1 election.
Kimberly Edwards, a music teacher at Nelson and Woodlands elementary schools, was one of the 24 people who spoke against the cuts. She said the district has spent unnecessary money on other items that would be better spent on teacher salaries.
“Vote ‘no’ on the dismissal of these teachers,” she said. “It is time for the board to stop voting with the administration and start listening to the stakeholders of this district. And we say, ‘Save the teachers, and stop the spending.’”
Edwards was one of several speakers who referenced big-ticket items on the agenda. They included the purchase of a warehouse for $1.55 million, the resurfacing of the high school track and the installation of two turf fields for $2.33 million.
The board voted unanimously to table the purchase of the warehouse until its next regular meeting on April 28 and voted 6-1 against the athletic expenditures, instructing Superintendent Patrick Shelton to break off each one into a separate agenda item for the board’s work session on April 7.
After the meeting, Shelton said the decision to dismiss the 16 non-tenured teachers was difficult but necessary, as the district has been spending more on salaries than it’s been taking into its education fund. He said the uncertainty of federal funding under the Trump administration also played a role.
“We do have about 6% of our budget, about $4 million, that comes from federal funds,” Shelton said. “That mostly pays salaries and support for teachers, and so if we were to lose that, that would certainly be another layer that we would have to navigate through.”
He said the district is hoping that most federal funding stays intact for the next school year, but it could be at slightly lower levels.
In a memo to staff last week, Shelton said that the cuts would include 14 full-time teachers and an additional six full-time substitute teachers. The agenda item for Monday’s meeting included a total of 16 full-time teachers to be cut without specifying whether they were teachers or substitutes.
Edwardsville teachers, parents and students rallied outside Liberty Middle ahead of the board meeting, holding signs and cheering as cars honked in support.
Robert Unzicker, Edwardsville Education Association co-president, was among them. He is a science teacher at Edwardsville High School and is in his 18th year in the district.
Unzicker noted that these cuts came shortly before upcoming contract negotiations between the EEA and the district.
“This absolutely makes it difficult,” he said. “They were already talking about and discussing potential losses of federal funding in the neighborhood of about $4 million, which is a significant amount, but we have a district that has a budget of over $100 million.”
Unzicker said teachers feel like the district is repeating a pattern of balancing its budget on their backs.
“And that has left us behind neighboring districts,” he said. “We are losing talent from our district to neighboring districts for pay. We’re losing for working conditions. We’re losing for just flat-out morale.”
