(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa City school board has approved a three-million-dollar short-term loan for expenses as it looks to a long-term plan to trim costs. District Superintendent Matt Degner is proposing cutting five full-time staff positions in the district’s middle schools through attrition.  “The next step of the conversation is to really start to set those overall budget priorities, board priorities, and then: how do we achieve those goals through our staffing plan?,” he says.

The district would save an estimated 500-thousand dollars by reducing middle school staff. Degner is proposing reducing up to 23 teachers total through attrition, along with two administrators.
Board member Jayne Finch says the district should take a deeper look at possible cuts to the district’s administration.  “We are in a crisis. It’s not because we don’t like administrators or think that they aren’t important. It’s because we’re in a crisis and we want to find savings wherever we can, because we know that it is important to keep that funding in the classroom,” she says.

The cost cutting plan comes after ten million dollars was transferred from the district’s health insurance fund to its general fund without the board’s initial approval. The board retroactively approved the transfer in January.