COTTONWOOD FALLS — In the wake of declining enrollment, USD 284, Chase County, will have some difficult decisions to make at Monday evening’s school board meeting.
Superintendent Greg Markowitz said the district is a declining-enrollment district, which means the funding from full-time equivalent students will go down. Even if the funding goes down, the school district still has to adhere to the same state mandates — many of which are going unfunded already.
School board members began working on the budget for the 2008-09 school year in 2007 after final enrollment numbers were taken. The district started out the budgeting process with an increase in FTE funding. The funding went from $4,433 a student, up from $4,374 previously. The funding for at-risk students went up as well. After enrollment in the district declined, however, the district lost $60,584 in funding, only getting an overall gain of $5,465. The district had budgeted for a $66,049 gain on the increase in funding, Markowitz said.
After budget adjustments, the district soon saw a large deficit. Debits included fuel costs, utility costs, mandatory funding for tuition at Flint Hills Technical College, worker’s compensation premium, unemployment premium, wage increases and extended teacher contracts. After all the adjustments were made, the district faced a $127,174 shortage.
Markowitz said the district only has four options to address funding shortages: cut programs, cut staff, raise taxes or a combination of the three. Markowitz said things that are not state mandated all are an option for the chopping block.
“The whole procedure is based on what new money do we need ...” he said.
The funding shortage puts school board members in a tough position, Markowitz said. Because the cities and the county had to raise taxes, the district chose not to pursue that option. Instead, the board decided not to replace a retired teacher for $47,713; not to replace another teacher at $19,085; discontinued the extended teacher contracts for $4,677 and $1,262; reduced discretionary social services program for $10,563; cut the noon kindergarten bus route for $28,820; cut the activities bus route by 40 percent for $10,310; and cut the driver’s education program at $5,508. In addition, the school district approved the local option budget for $41,111, which is the taxes collected for the school district. The cuts resulted in a $764 positive balance in the budget.
Markowitz said the FTE funding is unfair to districts that have declining enrollment because those districts face the same mandates as other districts.
“We’re expected to do the same thing as other schools,” he said.
When the district faces a shortage, there isn’t a surplus sitting around, Markowitz added.
Unfunded mandates are another problem, he said.
Markowitz said often the legislature passes a mandate and just expects the school districts to fund it.
“Unfunded mandates are killing us,” he said. “That’s the key issue right now.”
One unfunded mandate is full-day kindergarten. The districts are still only paid at a half-day rate.
With this year’s enrollment numbers in hand, the board will start looking at the 2009-10 school year’s budget at 7 p.m. Monday at the board of education building in downtown Cottonwood Falls.
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Posted by kseyetie (anonymous) on October 6, 2008 at 8:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Good luck folks. Declining enrollment is a plague on nearly 2/3 of Kansas' districts. Without some visionary plans and some good funding ideas, rural education is in trouble.
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