Facing $14 million budget crisis, KC-area district to cut 70+ jobs, close school
Facing a budget shortfall of nearly $14 million, the Hickman Mills school board approved a series of sweeping cuts Thursday night that will close one school building and eliminate dozens of district contracts, programs and positions.
Truman Elementary will close its doors starting in the 2026-2027 school year, with all students attending class at Alvin Brooks Elementary School. All seventh and eighth grade students at Alvin Brooks, currently a middle school, will move to Hickman Mills Middle School.
Meanwhile, the district will shift its model for middle school education, with Santa Fe Elementary converting into a sixth-grade center and its students rezoning to one of the other six elementary schools in the district.
Interim Hickman Mills Superintendent Dr. Dennis Carpenter said that without significant cuts like those approved Thursday night, the district would likely need to shut its doors entirely within two years.
“What was not on my radar when I got here was the fact that the district’s finances were in shambles,” Carpenter said Thursday night.
Carpenter inherited an $11 million budget defecit at the start of the school year, he said. Abrupt changes to the Jackson County property tax system — which accounts for a significant chunk of revenue in Hickman Mills and other districts — has brought the district’s total debt closer to $14 million, Carpenter said.
The cuts will save the district just under $13 million, with more than $9 million in operations and staff cuts and more than $3 million coming from the elimination of Truman. More than 70 staff positions will be eliminated districtwide.
As about 80 community members looked on anxiously, the school board passed the cuts by a margin of 5 to 1 to 1, with Irene Kendrick voting against the proposal and Clifford Ragan III abstaining.
Many attendees were staffers at Truman, which will soon close as part of the plan approved Thursday night.
“Truman is a real neighborhood school,” Markeeda Riley, a first-grade teacher at Truman, told The Star. “It’s a very diverse community. It’s really sweet. It’s kind of sad to be leaving our actual little building.”
While navigating a budget crisis, the district is also facing a full state audit as it continues to fight toward accreditation. The investigation stemmed from a whistleblower complaint about significant travel costs being expensed to district credit cards, according to Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick.
“When I finally got this information and I saw where we were, I didn’t want to believe it,” school board president Bonnaye Mims said Thursday night. “I did break a little bit. But we’ve got to work — we’ve got to work together. We’ve got to connect and we’ve got to reach out and pull everybody together to get this district back on the map.”
Carpenter, who returned to the district this year after serving as superintendent from 2013 to 2017, said that he worked to eliminate some “glaring inefficiencies” in contracts but was also compelled to turn to staff cuts. Teacher and faculty salaries typically make up 80 to 85% of a school district’s annual budget, he said.
“There’s no place to look, folks,” Carpenter said. “When you’ve squeezed contractual pieces to the bone, then you start looking at people.”
At its current rate of spending, the district would be down to 1.1% of its fund balance by the end of the school year, Carpenter said - which would likely prompt direct intervention from state leaders, including the dismissal or replacement of district leaders.
“If the district does nothing — or did nothing — then we’d have no school district at the end of next year,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter and board members repeatedly emphasized that they share staff and families’ disappointments over the complete elimination of certain services. The cuts will leave Hickman Mills without multiple programs and contractors utilized by students for both enrichment and extra support outside of the classroom, which Carpenter acknowledged is a massive loss.
“When you don’t have the resources to do ideal, you’ve got to start thinking about essential,” Carpenter said.
What roles are getting cut
Staffing and operations cuts will account for a savings of about $9.76 million during the 2026-2027 school year.
Eliminated positions will include a speech language pathologist, an English language development specialist, two IT facilitators, five behavioral interventionists, a 504 plan coordinator, two Ruskin High School teachers, two Real World Learning Center teachers and several permanent substitute teachers.
The district will also eliminate its literacy and math intervention programs, cutting four full-time positions and 12 additional roles. The intervention programs were established during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carpenter said, and were a particular point of contention with school building leaders as the proposed cuts were finalized.
Further dismissals will include 12 members of custodial staff, 16 lunch aides, a warehouseman, a safety and security monitor, a director of communications and a discipline secretary.
Cuts to services
The district will eliminate its contracts with EverDriven, which provides alternative transportation services for some students, and Quantum, a staffing agency that supplies the district with occupational therapists and other medical-adjacent providers.
Hickman Mills students will no longer receive in-school therapy services from Transform & Thrive, a program which connects therapists with predominantly late-elementary and early-middle school students over primarily emotional distress and behavioral issues.
The AVID program, a college and career readiness system targeting grades 5 to 9, will no longer exist in the district.
Hickman Mills’ gifted education program, known as CODE, has been reduced from two full-time teachers to one. Its library media specialist programming will be reduced so that one staff member is serving all elementary and middle schools.
“I’m not trying to make the case that it’s ideal,” Carpenter said as the audience dissolved into whispers when library media cuts were described. “I’m trying to tell you that we’ve got to tighten our belts somewhere.”
The proposed series of cuts came together over the course of about four months, Carpenter said. District leaders were assisted by staff from the Missouri Capital Asset Advantage Treasury (MOCAAT), an organization providing Missouri school districts with resources for financial management.
“When they came in, they said, ‘Dr. Carpenter, the math isn’t math-ing,’” Carpenter said.
Cost to students
Audrey Peters, a media specialist at Ingels Elementary, said that literacy intervention and media specialist cuts are an area of particular concern for district staff members.
A significant portion of students at Ingels rely on intervention in order to meet their reading goals, Peters said, and some library media specialists have taken on auxiliary duties helping troubleshoot devices throughout their building.
“I know when [reading interventionists] come to the library, I constantly have students getting pulled or coming back,” Peters said. “Losing that is going to be very tough for our students.”
Deborah McGill, a retired Hickman Mills teacher who recently returned to the district as a reading interventionist, said that classroom instructors rely significantly on assistance from the now-eliminated intervention programs in order to keep students on target to be ready for the next grade level.
“Students need reading success plans. A classroom teacher does not have an opportunity to do that in a classroom setting,” McGill said, to applause.
“...I am about the students of Hickman Mills. I am about their reading program and their reading success. And in order for that to happen, they have to have a support system. And that support system is not going to be there.”
Attitude of gratitude
Though board members, teachers and residents alike expressed sincere dismay and horror at the level of cuts, many also shared feelings of gratitude toward Carpenter for spearheading a solution to a drastic financial crisis.
“We’re here because of previous measures,” board member Clifford Ragan III said. “This whole board, the seven of us up here…I’m going to own this because this is our fault that we allowed this to go this far.”
“I didn’t agree with everything,” board member Vanessa Claborn said after Thursday’s vote, addressing Carpenter. “No one agrees with everything anyone says. But I am grateful that you are pulling us up out of this $14 million deficit… we are looking good already.”
For Gloria Dooley, a paraprofessional at Ingels Elementary, keeping state intervention out of Hickman Mills schools is worth significant sacrifice elsewhere — even as she worries about potentially losing her own job, she said.
“I was just so concerned about the state coming in and taking over,” Dooley said, addressing Carpenter and the board. “I hear so many people complaining, but no one has suggestions and no one wants to be in either of your shoes.”
Thursday’s decision is far from the first time that Hickman Mills has faced the task of bouncing back from serious financial strain, Mims said. Most recently, two elementary schools — Johnson and Symington — were permanently shuttered in 2019.
“People didn’t expect us to make it,” Mims said. “People didn’t expect us to turn out the kind of students that we did, that have gone to college and become incredible people in the community.”
New schools, new map
Along with shuttering Truman, shifting Alvin Brooks to an elementary school and repurposing Santa Fe Elementary School as a sixth-grade center, the school board approved a rezoning plan for the 2026-2027 school year. This set of recommendations passed unanimously.
“I understand it’s difficult for the Truman families,” board member Irene Kendrick said. “The school spirit you had at Truman, you can carry it over to Alvin Brooks. It’s not the building that keeps your pride. It’s the school. It’s the students, it’s the teachers.”
Closing Truman is expected to save the district about $3.1 million, Carpenter said.
Under the plan, about 40% of students will be considered to live within walking distance of their school, which could reduce the district’s bussing needs in the future while allowing for an expanded crossing guard program, Carpenter said.
The change will also allow Pre-K students at the John Sharp Early Learning Center to utilize the Alvin Brooks Elementary School gym, which they cannot currently access, Carpenter said. A series of air conditioning units recently installed at Truman will be shifted to other district buildings once the school closes its doors.
Riley, the first-grade teacher, said that Truman’s closure came as a shock to her colleagues, many of whom are still reeling from the revelation of the district’s major budget deficit.
“This is real serious work in our society. We’re educating our future,” Riley said. “And we’re talking about $14 million? Where did that come from? Why didn’t we teachers know about that — that we were doing so bad?”
Farewell to Truman
As Truman staff prepare to adjust to a new school environment, Riley said she’s been reflecting on the particular history and diversity of the Truman community. The student body includes a sizable population of Muslim students, Riley said, which she feels is unique within Kansas City. Meanwhile, one of Truman’s principals is a former student.
“Diversity lends itself to education,” Riley said. “...I’ve been really proud of the things that have been happening in the Mills.”
Carpenter and other board members feel that the change would keep the Truman community somewhat intact. The elementary school has a deep history in the district and is known for close-knit classrooms and enthusiastic school spirit, he said.
“The Truman community - I’ve seen it in action,” Carpenter said. “At the Alvin Brooks site, things are larger. There’s more opportunity.”
Some remained optimistic that Truman could reopen at a later date.
“Moving forward, I think we can work together as a community and as board members to ensure that Truman does come back online, that Truman doesn’t go away,” Kendrick said.
The district will host a community meeting January 27th at 6 p.m. at the Real-World Learning Center, 10301 Hickman Mills Drive, to collect additional feedback on the upcoming budget cuts and reorganizations.
