School-of-Thought

Seems the blogs are full of dire budget news. Pure Pierre Politics writes: 

The news gets worse. The governor’s forecast for state government’s 2011 budget shows a $170 million chasm between revenues and spending. State government has $107 million in reserves.  Someplace, somehow, $65 million of savings and revenue needs to be found. That doesn’t address what happens come the 2012 budget with no stimulus and no reserves left. 

The news doesn’t get much better when we look to the federal side.  Here’s what Education Week has to say: 

The hope of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress has been that the $787 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—including some $100 billion for education—would soften the pain of the recession and help drive a recovery. 

But as helpful as many state and local officials have found the once-only stimulus aid in coping with current and anticipated revenue shortfalls, it creates some awfully big holes to fill when the money begins to run out late next year in what’s widely known as the “funding cliff.” 

School districts around the country are feeling the pain.  It may not be long until we do too.  

On the positive side, our school district is financially strong.  Past school boards have created a legacy of financial stability, and I have no doubt our current board will continue the tradition.   Whether we face a funding cliff, a funding slope, or any other type of funding topography, we’ll deal with it as we deal with any issue that comes before us — professionally — and always with the best interests of our children in mind.

Watertown School Board concluded the last of its three budget work sessions last night.

The board reviewed Lake Area Tech’s (LATI) proposed budget for 2008-09, and a took a second look at the school district’s K-12 general fund. The meeting started at 6 PM instead of the usual 7 PM to allow for more discussion time, since the last meeting on k-12 was unexpectly shortened (due to our lovely spring blizzard).

LATI President Shephard started the session with a review of the strategic plan, focusing on the plan’s four key areas: funding, marketing, staff retention, and instructional quality.

Listed for the board were some dozen or so strategies in each of the four areas, like marketing LATI’s near-100% graduate placement data to increase the public recognition of LATI’s effectiveness.

The board was also provided material on what LATI calls ‘environmental scanning’ – basically, information that helps LATI drive their decision making process. This included projections of high-school graduates, a breakdown of LATI student population by a variety of parameters such as age and race, and a variety of marketing information.

Concerning salaries, the board approved a 4.5% increase in instructor pay, a 6.09% increase in pay for classified employees, and a 3.5% increase for administration.

In regard to LATI’s overall budget, the proposal is for a 4.3 percent increase. This figure doesn’t however include the $2,920,000 in construction costs for the new diesel-energy tech-welding facility that’s being planned. If you include new construction and equipment costs, the total proposed 2008-09 budget is up $3,718,119, from $10,796,552 to $14,514,641.

On the k-12 side, board members brought questions about a variety of line items – asking for administration to review the history, purpose or rationale of the expense

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Next in line for the budget process will be a presentation of the entire preliminary budget at the May 12^th school board meeting. During the scheduled June 9^th school board meeting, the board will discuss any potential modifications to the preliminary budget, and by June 21^st, the business manager will publish the proposed budget along with a notice of hearing. The hearing on the final budget will occur on July 14^th. If you’re a district resident and have any questions, comments or input, please feel free to contact me or any school board member.

 Last night the Watertown School Board held the first of three planned budget work sessions to prepare for the 2008-09 school year.  My personal notes from the meeting follow this paragraph.  Just to clarify, these are personal notes I either took in preparation for the meeting, during, or after the meeting.  These are not the district’s notes, nor are they the notes from any other board member.  They are not anything official.  I provide them here simply to provide more information, to be transparent with the community, and to encourage feedback or questions.  

1. Call to order

2. Exec Session – Personnel

3. Action on Personnel – accept resignations of WHS counselor and WHS/WMS band instructor

4. Property Tax and State Aid information:  Calculations were provided how property taxes will be effected in the upcoming year.  Examples were given based on an asset worth $100,000.  Beginning with an owner occupied home valued at $100,000, property taxes will decrease $48 compared to the prior year.  For Ag land valued at $100,000, property taxes will decrease $31 compared to the prior year.  And for commercial property valued at $100,000, property taxes will decrease $103 compared to the prior year.  Local effort toward the General Fund is estimated to decrease $57,953 — from $7,960,008 to $7,902,054 – while local effort toward the Special Education Fund is estimated to increase $73,592 — from $1,626,909 to $1,700,501.

5. General Fund – The amount the district receives for the general fund is based on the number of students enrolled in the district multiplied by a “Student Need Number” established by the legislature.  This year the legislature established the Student Need Number at $4,664.66 per student, or a 3% increase over the prior year. The enrollment figure is calculated by averaging the past two year’s fall enrollment numbers.  This nets out to be 3744 students – which is a loss of 59 compared to the last year. Multiplying the Student Need Number ($4664) by the number of students enrolled (3744) results in a total estimated increase of General Fund dollars of $240,510 (combined state aid and local effort), which is a 1.4% increase over the last year. The total amount to the General Fund breaks down to 54% from the state, and 46% from local efforts. 

6. Special Education Fund – The estimated district need to special education is $3,184,229 – an increase of $325,875 compared to last year. The estimated state contribution is $1,520,525, with local effort estimated at $1,663,704. Funding is based on the number of enrolled special education students and their disability classification.  The federal government provides for six levels of classification (e.g. autism is one level of classification).  Each level carries a specific dollar value.  

7. Food Budget- total budget of $1.255 million. Increase of $93,125.  Anticipate food costs are to increase $58,000 due to cost of serving healthy food products.  Lunch and breakfast will increase 25 cents per meal.

8. Concessions Budget – total budget of $198,900.  Increase of $33,700.  If necessary, may transfer money from this account to Capital Outlay to assist with costs associated with the scoreboard/message centers ($30,000).

9. Pension Fund Budget – total budget of $451,460, a decrease of $46,900.

10. Five year Capital outlay plan and Capital projects were reviewed.

NOTE: If you are interested in attending a budget work session (they are public meetings), the next one will be held April 10th at 7pm in the Superintendent’s office.  We will be discussing the general fund.  Comments or questions are always welcome.

The Watertown School District kicks off its annual budgeting process with its first Budget Work Session scheduled for April 1st at 7 pm. Like all meetings where a majority of the board gathers, budget meetings are open to the public. 

A short executive session is scheduled at the beginning of the meeting to discuss  personnel, but following that, the public portion of the meeting will begin with a review of tax information and a general overview of state aid to the district.

According to the data, for 2008-09 school year, 54% of funding will come from state dollars and 46% from local money.

Rick Hohn will discuss the impact of the legislature’s 3% increase on the 2008-09 student need number (the amount of money the district receives per full-time enrollment), as well as the impact of our district’s reduced enrollment numbers from the last two years (we have an average reduction of 58 students enrolled in the district during this time period).

Factoring in a 3% per student increase along with a 58 student decrease, as a bottom line, the district expects to receive a 1.4% increase in the General Fund for 2008-09 school year.  Obviously that’s not a great deal of money considering the rate of inflation. This is an issue that will continue to weight heavily on the district as we contemplate how to continue to provide educational excellence to our children while we become financially leaner as an organization.

Following the overview, we’ll get into the meat of three budgets:  Nutrition Services, Concessions Fund, and the Pension Fund.

April 10th is the next scheduled meeting.  The plan is to discuss our General Fund and the Special Education fund.  And on April 21st we’ll meet to discuss LATI.

The process generally isn’t too exciting (and that’s an understatement), but if there is public input, this is the time to give it.  

While not yet signed by the Governor, yesterday’s legislative compromise to provide K-12 public education a 3% funding increase comes as welcome relief to this school board member,  That might sound like heresy to some, but look, it could have been just the original 2.5% proposed by the Governor!  If the bill is signed, schools will receive the 2.5% increase plus an additional half-percent that has to be applied toward teacher pay and benefits.

Clearly, more would have been better.  Senate Republican leader Dave Knudson originally proposed a 4.3% increase followed by a trimmed back increase of 3.8%.  He called the final 3% compromise “a disappointment.”  No arguments there, Dave.

However, I appreciate the political realities of Pierre and the healthy political tension that’s part of our two party system of government.  I’m grateful for the amount of time and attention our legislators put into dealing with education — clearly it was not a back burner issue this year. 

Education is a vital issue to South Dakotans, and in my view the more school districts can do to educate our state legislators on the real-life issues we face in a running school district, the better. The flip side is that legislators need to show interest and take the time to interact with their local school districts periodically through the year.  I believe there are only a handful of legislators that have prior experience serving on a school board; the majority has no first-hand experience.

As a school district, Watertown wil be in decent financial shape with a 3% increase. Our district has a long tradition of fiscal responsibility and our budgetary projections over the next three years are based on conservative revenue estimates.  The extra half-percent for the next school year isn’t much, but it’s something, and I’m grateful.

President Bush’s FY2009 budget eliminates Perkins money for Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs.  This directly impacts Lake Area Multi-District (LAMD) to the tune of some $51,000, or roughly 36% of our capital outlay budget.  This story isn’t new.  In both FY2006 and FY2007 funding for CTE was eliminated, and in FY2008 it was cut in half.   Continue reading “Perkins takes it in the Shorts”