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Schools recommend $4.5 million budget
BY JAMES JACENICH • STAFF WRITER
 | | Mostly teachers and staff attended the Highland County School Board budget public hearing last Wednesday. Pictured (l-r) are Highland Elementary School librarian Nancy Vance, substitute teacher Larry Held, teaching assistant Susan Glendinning, second-grade teacher Meg Wilson and P.E./Health teacher Cynthia Wood. (Recorder photo by James Jacenich) |
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MONTEREY - The Highland County School Board approved a $4,545,178 budget after last Wednesday's public hearing. The budget, much the same as superintendent Gary Blair proposed earlier in the month, includes a 2 percent raise for teachers. Board members noted they had recognized the expenses listed as necessary to providing a good education. But a last minute decrease in required state and local funding suddenly decreased the revenue Blair had expected for covering school expenses.
Blair blamed a "troubled triangle" of factors for the drop in state aid: decreasing enrollment, a smaller state budget, and modifications to the formula that determines state funding.
The state contribution fell $30,712 and the required county contribution dropped $83,058 from what Blair anticipated and budgeted only a week ago.
 | | Pictured (l-r) are parent Karla Obaugh, Highland High School principal Randy Hooke and Highland Elementary School principal Teresa Blum. (Recorder photo by James Jacenich) |
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Blair tied decreases in his proposed budget to the elimination of personnel. He said for every cut of roughly $52,000, a staff member would have to go. One of those includes the athletic director/recreation director position Blair fought hard for and established last year.
Cuts in maintenance, capital improvements, materials, fuel and buses were out of the question, since all those categories were already at minimal levels, school officials said. Eliminating a bus or bus route would create hardships on students like a two-hour bus ride one way to school, catching the bus an hour earlier than normal and getting home an hour later at night. Blair said a cut in materials would mean a cut in paper and pencils, the basic tools of any student. That left board members to ponder what else could be cut - Books? Custodial services? Toilet paper?
A 2 percent raise was also a minimum. Even if the raise were eliminated, it would only amount to a savings of about $60,000, they said, and a cost in teacher morale and retention.
Blair gave the school board three options - give teachers a 2 percent raise, a 2 percent raise minus a teacher, or a 3 percent raise minus a teacher. If the board chose to go with the 2 percent minus a teacher option, it would have saved around $52,000. If the board approved a 3 percent raise minus a teacher, it would have saved $22,000. But the school board agreed that cutting the faculty would not be a good idea and voted for the higher amount.
Blair could have made the cuts himself, but chose instead to reshuffle revenue categories, offsetting the loss of state and county required contributions by asking for an additional $113,770 from the county on top of the $156,324 he had already asked for.
The 2007 county contribution was $1,951,772. The 2008 contribution, if supervisors approve, is $2,196,149, an increase of $244,377, or 12.5 percent over last year. Dividing the total school budget by the number of students also reveals an upwardly spiraling cost trend: in 2007-08 taxpayers paid $16,070 per student; in the 2008/2009 budget proposal, taxpayers will pay $17,548 a student, a 9 percent increase in one year.
Attributing the increase to one factor or another and relying on one percentage or another to gauge how much money the school should receive can be misleading. The schools' total revenue, as well as the county's, is a complicated package of multiple revenue streams from the federal, state and county governments. Some of the money the school and county receives is tied to performance, based on matching money, or on specificallyidentified student needs such as special education. Some staffing or facility costs can't be reduced with every reduction in the number of students. Statistically, that would require a partial teacher or half a classroom, for example.
Taxpayers are also paying for education through several different accounts - federal and state income taxes as well as county real estate taxes. Taxpayers, therefore, have several elected officials at different levels of government to blame for the current dilemma, not just the board of supervisors or school board. Levels of government outside their control have forced the school board and the board of supervisors to face tough choices. In one way, a decrease in state and federal funding without an equivalent decrease in state and federal mandates amounts to state government breaking an implied promise not to pass on unfunded mandates to localities. Unfunded mandates, however, are not illegal. The state and federal governments have passed down mandates forcing localities to foot the bill.
The total school budget is $206,180 over last year's budget, or an increase of 4.8 percent, commensurate with past increases and roughly in keeping with inflation. Supervisors have historically been willing to maintain the status quo.
Supervisors can alter the proposal only by category. They could cut spending on secondary education, for example (one of 16 categories), which would force Blair to do what he said he would do if the budget were cut - let a teacher go.
Supervisors could cut about $100,000, and Blair could forego hiring a math teacher for next year to replace Jessica Pyle, who leaves at the end of this year, and he could choose not to hire a replacement for retiring high school principal Randy Hooke. The cut in these two positions might not force a teacher out who didn't want to go, but it would increase the workload for the remaining teachers and principal and directly affect students' educational opportunities, though Blair said he would finda way to make a personnel cut work. The loss of a high school principal would also eliminate Blair's proposal to salvage the athletic director position by assigning it to the new principal.
If supervisors decide to cut even deeper, then Blair would be faced with a range of options from letting go a member or members of existing staff, with consequences from having to rearrange the curriculum, lengthening teacher work days as preparation time increased, or to the most serious consequence of all - loss of accreditation for the school because it would not be able to meet state standards.
For years, the school budget has exceeded the combined state and county mandated contributions. Supervisors have paid the difference, albeit reluctantly. Taxpayers have complained as they saw their tax bills grow larger each year, but have also reluctantly agreed to increases, if for no other reason than for the good of the county's school children.
Add to that the problem that enrollment at Highland County Public Schools continues to drop, this year by 11 students. It's not enough to justify a reduction in force yet. The school system still needs to have a teacher for grades 1-5, still needs to provide math, science and English at the higher grades, and still needs to have an art teacher and music teacher to meet standards of learning requirements.
Teachers argued that a teacher is also needed in the school's distance learning lab - an aide would not be able to provide the level of instruction and assistance students need. Teachers also expect enrollment in distance learning to increase next year and more students to enter the middle school level as a bulge in the student population continues to move through the system, even though the overall student population is down.
Blair said a reduction in force would likely occur in the next few years as enrollment continues to drop, but he opposed any reduction this coming year.
He held out a ray of hope, reminding the school board that the budget season was not over. "This may not be the final word," said Blair. "The governor has final say (over the state portion of the school budget). But this is the final say from the General Assembly. This is what they approved. It's not very good news."
Supervisors are faced with having to possibly raise taxes (the tax rate - $.38 per $100 of assessed value on all taxable real estate - is at its lowest in 15 years, thanks to increasing real estate values), cut other county services, or force Blair to cut personnel. The low tax rate is of little consolation to property owners who saw their property values double or triple during the 2006 reassessment and other departments within county government would be hard-pressed to sacrifice considering their budgets have also been held to minimal increases over the years.
Another possibility is to shift one county expense that was budgeted for last year but is not required this year to pay for the unexpected increase in the school budget. Resident Larry Held recommended the approximately $200,000 spent on additional legal defense fees last year by the county (the result of the county's defense of its decision to permit industrial wind turbines in the county) be continued this year, with the money going to the school instead, which would be more than enough to cover the decrease in revenues from other sources.
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