Easton Area School District plans to cut 60 jobs through attrition, superintendent says

The Easton Area School District will cut 60 jobs through attrition to try to balance the 2024-25 budget, according to the superintendent.

Superintendent Tracy Piazza said the district won’t replace 40 paraprofessionals who retired or quit over the course of the past school year. She previously said the district wouldn’t replace 20 vacancies left by departing teachers and “Act 93″ employees, a group that includes administrators and maintenance workers.

Piazza made the comments at the school board meeting Tuesday, June 11. You can see her remarks on a YouTube video of the meeting.

The district has been wrestling for months with how to bring down a projected $12 million shortfall for budget year 2024-25 without dipping deeply into reserve funds. Piazza is still looking for ways to cut the budget in advance of its final adoption on June 25.

“In the end what we can say is we did our due diligence to do the best we can at this point in time,” Piazza said.

The preliminary budget passed last month by a 6-3 vote. The board agreed to a 2.25% tax increase.

Piazza said the board hasn’t been filling paraprofessional jobs since October. Even with the cuts, the district still has 120 filled paraprofessional jobs. She’s not sure how necessary those jobs are and whether the job duties are consistent from school to school across the district.

Paraprofessionals are most critically needed to work one-on-one with some special needs students or non-native English speakers, Piazza said.

The 2024-25 proposed budget cuts $1.5 million from school building budgets and department budgets, Piazza said.

The district has been working without a permanent finance director since Michael Sokoloski left a year ago. The district was getting by with acting Chief Financial Officer Hans Baltzerson until he left at the end of March. The district hired Kathy Ciaciulli as the interim chief financial officer on May 21.

Piazza promised to clean up the budget process.

“We will look to come in with balanced budgets through the rest of my term,” she said Tuesday.

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Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com.