Tulsa schools seek public input on slashing $20M from budget

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Tulsa Public Schools has released a report detailing the community feedback collected during a series of public meetings and through an online survey about the 2020-21 budget redesign effort.

Officials hosted 11 community engagement meetings through September and October and created the survey to hear from stakeholders about how the school district should slash $20 million from next year's budget.

The report released on a recent Monday reflects responses from 5,773 individuals who completed the survey and 847 people who attended the meetings, the Tulsa World reported.

Tulsans consistently named teacher compensation, class sizes and social-emotional learning and behavioral supports as the areas they value most. They also indicated that they were most willing to make budget reductions related to student transportation and bell times, teacher leadership opportunities, building utilization and central office services.

Superintendent Deborah Gist, who led the meetings, said the input doesn't surprise her. She noted that community members expressed their desire to focus on reducing services that don't directly affect students and teachers, a sentiment shared by district officials.

"I think that I would say what we see in these results is that Tulsans care about their schools, and they care about the same things we care about," Gist said. "They know we need to have reasonable class sizes. They want to make sure that teachers and support employees are compensated well. They care about the arts and extra programming. We care about all of those same things, as well."

The district largely blames a $20 million deficit on declining enrollment and a decade of state funding cuts to education. TPS has slashed $22 million since 2015 and dipped into its fund balance last year for the first time in a decade to...