Mar. 1—GRAND FORKS — Administrators and the union representing the district’s teachers are remaining tight-lipped about a series of meetings between administrators and teachers whose programs face cuts under a plan announced last week.

Over the last several days, district administrators have held separate meetings with teachers and staff from Grand Forks Public Schools’ music and German programs and SAIL (Social and Academic Intervention Learning) Center.

All three of those programs face full-time equivalency cuts under a plan announced to most of the district’s teachers in a district-wide Zoom meeting led by Superintendent Terry Brenner Feb. 22. German language instruction is expected to be phased out entirely over the next several years.

“The current reality, from a superintendent-School Board-district leadership perspective, is if we do nothing about our expenditures we’re going to have a $3 million-plus budget deficit next year,” Brenner said in a recording of the Feb. 22 meeting obtained by the Herald.

Scores of students, parents and former district teachers

spoke out against the proposed cuts during a four-hour comment session at Monday’s School Board meeting

. At that time, Brenner announced plans to meet with the German and music teachers.

Since then, he and other administrators held at least three meetings with some of the affected teachers and staff on Wednesday and Thursday. Also in attendance have been leaders from the Grand Forks Education Association, the local union representing teachers, and a representative from the statewide union North Dakota United.

Details on the meetings remain scarce. In a Thursday evening text message exchange with the Herald, GFEA President Melissa Buchhop declined to discuss details of the latest meeting.

In a Friday text message, Brenner told the Herald “I’ve met with music and German teachers this week to listen,” adding that follow-up meetings would be scheduled.

Amber Haskell of North Dakota United sat in on all three meetings.

“The administration provided information regarding how these decisions were made and listened to questions, concerns and creative solutions that teachers proposed,” Haskell wrote in an email. “This has been extremely difficult on staff.”

The FTE cuts are part of a bid by the district to restore its depleted general fund reserves to 15% of operating expenses by 2026, a standard Brenner told teachers Feb. 22 the district had maintained from at least 1985 until 2019.

According to Brenner, changes in state policy surrounding education funding and a lawsuit that reduced the school district’s building fund mill levy meant

the school district had to use its general fund balance

to cover several significant facilities costs.

A September 2021 referendum restored the building fund’s prior levy.

While the district was “on the right track,” Brenner said Feb. 22, “it doesn’t come without some pain and sacrifice along the way.”

Haskell also said via email that Grand Forks Public Schools and other districts’ financial difficulties stem from a lack of funding from the Legislature, adding Brenner had testified before the Legislature on the issue.

The proposed cuts would shave some $3.7 million in salaries and benefits from the district budget. The largest share of those cuts — $1.1 million — would occur at the elementary level.

District administrators and school principals, who are bound by separate contracts than teachers, decided where cuts would be made in a series of meetings held beginning in October. Teachers and the GFEA were excluded from those conversations.

The district has not provided a comprehensive overview of how the proposed cuts would be implemented. Affected teachers were told on a department-by-department or sometimes an individual basis about the planned cuts, and the district has not responded to a Herald request for such an overview.

It is known that cuts to the music program would essentially end one-on-one music instruction in Grand Forks and reduce the number of hours music teachers spend on music instruction, and that a computer science class currently taught in-person at Red River High School would be taught remotely from Central High School.

In his Feb. 22 video and remarks made at Monday’s School Board meeting, Brenner repeatedly referenced efforts to raise salaries for school district employees, alluding in particular to last year’s salary negotiations for the 2023-25 school years and mentioning Buchhop in the video.

“It was stated then and throughout this year that balancing the other side of the ledger was necessary,” Brenner said Monday. “Respectfully, we can’t expect to increase salaries by 13% over two years and expect it to balance itself.”

Buchhop took exception to those remarks in a Wednesday interview with the Herald, pointing out that administrators and directors had also received raises.

“I don’t think it’s fair to blame the teachers for the budget,” Buchhop said. “We are the biggest group of people you are paying, but you also have to keep wages competitive. There are also a lot of administrators, and you pay them a lot more.”

Brenner has also acknowledged the raises were necessary to keep the district competitive after years of lagging behind other public school districts in pay.

Brenner has said no teacher will lose their job this school year and that he hopes to close the gap on the proposed FTE cuts through attrition. He’s said the proposed cuts are designed such that teachers and paraprofessionals who see their FTE cut can fill other roles in the district.

Buchhop said Wednesday the GFEA would know more when the period for the school district to issue notices of reductions in force began, which she pegged at March 1.

“We’ve had a very good working relationship with Dr. Brenner and the GFEA over the last couple years, so I’m hoping we can find a creative solution and work through this,” she said.

She also said, however, that events occurring since Feb. 22 have cost her teachers considerable peace of mind.

“They’re unsettled. They’re not feeling appreciated, and they feel this kind of came out of nowhere,” Buchhop said. “It makes other teachers that weren’t a part of this now ask, ‘Am I next?'”