VIENNA — While last week’s special school-board meeting was full of apprehension over his proposed cuts, the Mathews Local Schools superintendent said earlier this week that the district is still doing fine.

“I think everybody, including the board and all of the people that were there, have the students and the best interests of the community in mind; the problem is, those points of view are different as to what the best interests going forward are,” Superintendent Russell McQuaide said. “With the board (of education), they made their decision. I respect their decision; I’m not going to be making any recommendations that contradict their wishes at this point.”

McQuaide said his decision to suggest reducing the special education supervisor position and abolish six five-year licensed positions across the district, while suspending four teachers’ limited contracts and reassigning several others for the 2025-26 school year, came after the district received Gov. Mike DeWine’s proposed budget — later formally introduced as House Bill 96 in the Ohio House of Representatives.

Up to that point, the district had a 55.9% carryover of its operating budget, which sits at approximately $10 million, McQuaide said.

“Around Feb. 17, 18, we received the governor’s budget; it showed about a $592,000 reduction in the school funding. It got me thinking, ‘geez, we’ve had some concerns’,” McQuaide said. “I’ve looked back at some things; we’ve had increases in other costs, like insurance, but we’ve endured these things because we’ve had this healthy carryover.”

McQuaide said HB 96 is an omnibus bill. He said he thought the House had “good intentions” in trying to help local taxpayers with their property tax rates, but it impacts public schools as it is.

McQuaide said the bill’s status caused him to be “looking seriously” at not just student-to-teacher ratios and other staff, but everything, with a bit more scrutiny than before.

“When you look at HB 96 and the elements of it, we stand to give back nearly $2.8 million — if it stands in the form it is, of course,” McQuaide said.

McQuaide reiterated that he wanted to make sure the district was being fiscally responsible and making reasonable moves to remain “fiscally solvent.” He said he looked to teacher positions because the largest expenses in schools are salaries and benefits, especially certified staff.

“Like any other business, you have to look at those things. However, I do understand we’re not just a business, we’re working with students,” McQuaide said. “The whole operation, we don’t want to impact student programming as much as possible; reasonable cuts that were appropriate to the current enrollment.”

McQuaide clarified that this was his thought process when he was evaluating options before the meeting, and he wasn’t trying to overturn the board’s call.

He said the district wasn’t in financial distress, as people at the meeting pointed out they could pay for a $2.2 million gymnasium project at the elementary school, but not teachers.

“We can pay teachers; we’re just trying to simply align the teacher population to the student population. It’s just an alignment,” McQuaide said. “One of the things, Mathews is not used to this, schools will often do RIF (Reduction in Force) notices in the spring. Why? Because they are not certain of their funding just coming in. Right now, there are certain unknowns; we don’t know what’s going to occur with the Senate.”

McQuaide said a lot of districts do RIF notices, and when their funding is finalized in July, they choose to continue with them or call staff back.

As for why retaining their carryover matters so much, it allows the district to absorb expenses that go beyond routine purchases, he said.

“School districts and commercial buildings live on a much higher scale than we do in our normal lives. To buy a furnace today for my home, I’d probably be in the $7,000 to $8,000 range,” McQuaide said. “Buying furnaces or HVAC for the school building was $359,000 plus design fees, then the project ended up being $378,000.”

He recalled when the district had to fix boilers in one of their buildings, which were 56 years old. The project was initially valued at $13,000, under the assumption that the problem stemmed from a couple of valves.

McQuaide said 40 tubes ended up being faulty, and the project jumped from the initial estimate to $32,000.

“It seems gigantic to have that kind of a carryover, but it can diminish swiftly by these sorts of things happening in our school,” he said. “I don’t know who’s come up with the 30% number. I’d be very interested in knowing how that transpired, because to me, 50% of your operating budget is what you should strive for in a school district or any other place so you can manage the unexpected.”

The board ultimately passed a resolution 3-2 at the May 7 special meeting to suspend the employment contract of special education supervisor Jennifer Soukenik by 60% because of the district’s financial conditions, and the “reorganization and consolidation” of administrative functions effective June 5, 2025. Board president Mark Haddle and board member Beth Haddle were the no votes.

McQuaide, who understood the confusion behind a “60% reduction,” explained that they weren’t eliminating the position, but it, like the proposed teacher cuts, was aligning with the district’s needs. Full-time employees were deemed to be working “100%,” eight hours a day, five days a week.

“The supervisory position, really, is about where we can do it, about two days a week, from what we’ve analyzed,” McQuaide said.