The school district Dallas (DISD) faces a shortfall of $ 64 million, thus cease to recruit employees, including teachers, reported yesterday by the district superintendent Michael Hinojosa.
To remedy the shortfall, which Hinojosa attributed to accounting failures at the time of estimating the financial impact of new hires, the DISD will have to withdraw money from their savings fund for emergencies.
The fund currently stands at 120 million dollars and take a couple of years to achieve those levels again.
The deficit is a result of budget errors and underestimate the cost of teachers and other instructional staff, "said Hinojosa. "We have frozen all recruitments, but I want to assure you that the district remains financially solvent."
The DISD has an annual budget of 1200 million dollars, bringing the deficit amounts to little more than five percent of the total. Among the possible impact of this new financial crisis is a danger that the credit rating of the district loses points, which would make the interest on loans that request.
Hinojosa said that apart from the cancellation of new recruitment, the district has initiated a reorganization of its departments of finance and business.
It also said that it will implement a plan of accounting in the next 30 days to avoid such occurrences.
The superintendent did not give to know who were responsible for not preventing the deficit, but announced that his chief of staff, Arnold Viramontes, oversee finances from now on.
The person responsible for finances DISD was Eric Anderson, who was not present yesterday that Hinojosa convened a press conference to explain the financial situation of the district.
Hinojosa refused to confirm whether any officer shall be dismissed as a result of the surprise deficit. He can not discuss personnel matters.
"The ultimate responsibility rests on us obviously. We have some departments that are directly responsible (of money) and we will make appropriate changes to correct the problem," said Hinojosa.
The news took a surprise to members of the governing board of DISD and teachers' unions.
Dale Kaiser, president of the local office of the national association of educators (NEA-Dallas), said that some children end up receiving classes because teachers have no substitutes master plant due to the freezing of places.
"If there are vacancies (teacher) will not hiring, so we will resort to (teachers) substitutes for long-term and students will not receive the quality instruction they need," said Kaiser.
He added that the district could also lay off teachers.
"(The superintendent) said that all options were on the table," she said.
Minutes after the announcement, the website of DISD already had an ad that read: "Dallas ISD is not recruiting employees for their schools."
Edwin Flores, a member of the governing board of the district, said that the deficit will affect the credit rating of DISD, as well as the morale of its employees.
However, he said he supported the superintendent.
"I have no words to express my surprise," said Flores. "He is our leader. We must support it at this time to succeed."
