AVON LAKE, Ohio — Facing financial challenges after voters rejected a bond issue in November, Avon Lake City Schools is hoping to persuade some of its employees to retire.
This week, the school district announced it will be offering retirement incentives to staff eligible through their respective retirement systems.
“This retirement incentive that we put out is just one piece of a larger puzzle to help us figure out how we can listen to what our community is telling us, remain fiscally responsible and also right-size our staff to our current enrollment,” explained Superintendent Joelle Magyar.
The cash incentives will be available to all employees who are eligible to retire at the end of the school year. Amounts will vary based on retirement systems and the classification of each employee.
The incentive offer comes several months after voters rejected a proposed bond issue during the November election. If it had passed, it would have generated several hundred million dollars to build a new middle school and two new elementary schools. The district said the facilities would have allowed the district to scale down from seven buildings to four and could have saved $2 million annually.
“Just to keep patching up is going to cost a lot more in the long-run,” said Michael Lisi.
The former Avon Lake teacher retired from his position as a chorus instructor in 2020, and his daughter graduated the same year. Lisi recalled the need for upgraded facilities at that time.
“I taught at Learwood Middle School and I can tell you that building has been crumbling around them for a while,” he said.
He was part of a push to pass Bond Issue 11 in November and said after its failure, he worried how the district’s financial strain could affect students.
“I’m worried that because we now need to take money from the operating budget to pay for these things, we may have to reduce curricular offerings for the students,” Lisi said.
The superintendent explained the district’s permanent improvement (PI) levy generates an annual $700,000. Nearly half of the money goes to purchase two new buses each year. She said covering costly infrastructure repairs requires the district to dip into its general fund.
“That is where our teachers’ salaries and benefits and all of our day-to-day costs are taken out of,” Magyar said.
She said the district would prefer attrition to staffing cuts.
“If we can minimize that potential of anyone being riffed, we’re going to do it through offering a retirement incentive. And hopefully we’ll have enough people take advantage where that won’t even be an issue for us,” she said.
The district has also been experiencing declining enrollment for more than a decade without significant changes in staffing. This year, slightly more than 300 seniors will graduate from Avon Lake City Schools, while the current kindergarten class contains 213 students.
Magyar hopes retirement incentives will help create a more appropriate staff-to-student ratio.
“If we look at any type of reduction of staff at those levels, we’re not going to see these giant increases in class sizes, which I think people are worried about,” she said.
Lisi told News 5 that he supports the retirement incentives as a way to tighten the district’s purse strings. He worries not doing so now could result in future challenges.
“If we go too long and don’t get the money we need through a ballot issue or whatever, I do think we might go through some hard times having to cut programs,” he said.
He recalled having an 8-year pay freeze while working in the district and said he’s optimistic making such financial decisions now will make less of an impact on students.
“I would hope that people would understand that sometimes maybe a pay freeze or early retirement incentives for retiring teachers, they’re like an investment in the future,” he said.
In late November, the Avon Lake School Board tabled discussions about presenting another bond issue to voters in a March special election. Magyar said the district is weighing feedback from a resident survey before deciding what a future bond issue could entail and when to put it back on the ballot.
Employees wishing to receive the retirement incentive must submit a letter of retirement to the superintendent by the end of February to be considered.
