POULSBO — North Kitsap High saw one of the lowest enrollment estimates in years for the 2010-11 academic year.
For classified office employees, reduced enrollment meant reduced work hours before school began. Classified employees started a week later than previous years and now face at least another month of catch up work.
The funding to support classified staff comes from the state, which bases its payout on student enrollment numbers.
Office manager Tonja Smith, who has worked at North since 1994, began working as soon as she could to catch up, but she’s not there yet, she said.
“Things are not slowing down,” Smith said. “There is still tons of paperwork coming in.”
Besides the information the staff has to file for this year, such as student health reports and sports contracts, the staff is also working on finalizing the paperwork from the 2009 school year.
Although enrollment is down the loss of time to prepare for the incoming students is what hurt the staff, Smith said.
There are 22 less full-time freshman attending the school this year, with a class size of 420. The average class size is between 470 and 500 students.
“It doesn’t matter that there is a lower enrollment,” Smith said. “We lost our setup time at the beginning of the year. … I have a stack of paper (three feet) high.”
A total of 48 classified staff work at the school and are in charge of several areas of work, such as secretarial, cafeteria workers, custodians and paraeducators. There are 10 office support staff in charge items, including registration.
In the past, school administration used funds for school supplies to make up for any funding that was lost for lower enrollment, said principal Kathy Prasch. However, because of a reduction in funds all around, using other pools of money was not possible this year.
“It was really rough in the beginning of the year,” Prasch said. “There was a lot of frustration during that first push when we were preparing for school to start.”
Before the school year began, classified staff was given the option to either take reduced hours or see a reduction in staff of one person. The staff chose to take reduced hours. If someone lost their job, the rest of the staff would need to pick up the slack, requiring more training and creating confusion, Smith said.
“If we cut one person we would all have to take part of the load,” Smith said. “Each person has their own speciality and to divide one person’s work to a group of people would be confusing.”
An increase in workload if the staff was reduced is not the only consequence. If someone’s work was spread throughout the staff, tracking an individual student’s paperwork would become a hassle, Smith said.
The office staff is looking at being caught up with work by October, but the exact date is unsure.
“The entire district is hurting right now,” Prasch said. “If enrollment continues with the trend it is going right now, we will need to look at more cuts.”
