That's because the district expects to have to bring several major revisions back to the board in coming months.
The district's chief financial officer, Melody Douglas, said the approved budget is a "fluid document," and revisions are common.
School board member Dr. Nels Anderson went even further, though, calling the approved document a "sham budget."
It's not that the district hasn't done its best to complete the budget, he said. The problem is that the district cannot predict state funding until after the Legislature finishes its budget.
Here's the situation:
The district is required by state law to present a balanced budget to the borough assembly by May 1. The assembly then has 30 days to approve the document.
About 70 percent of the district's general fund income, however, comes from the state, which is in the process of debating education funding levels for the coming year. That funding is based on student enrollment, which is dropping rapidly districtwide.
District finance officers planned conservatively. The preliminary budget eliminated all programs funded by state Learning Opportunity Grants, which are granted on a year-by-year basis. It also assumed that the state would not increase funding for education. Recognizing the dropping enrollment, the district also increased the pupil-teacher ratio throughout the district, laying off 56 teachers and saving about $2.3 million.
Even with such planning, the preliminary budget for the 2003-04 school year was about $2.9 million short. Though the district hopes the state will come through with additional funding, administrators, school board representatives and members of the public have spent months discussion where additional cuts could be made.
In the meantime, the district learned that its property and liability insurance, as well as employee retirement costs, are likely to increase dramatically in the coming year as well.
To reconcile the shortfall and the expected expense increases, the district proposed a list of adjustments to force the budget to balance for the May 1 deadline. The adjustments include:
Budgeting for a $302,941 increase in insurance expenses;
Cutting math and foreign language curriculum adoption funds, saving $624,356;
Reducing central office staff, saving $257,177;
Changing the custodial staffing formula (which means cutting custodians), saving $459,064;
Eliminating co-curricular travel, saving $244,873;
Eliminating unallocated funds, saving $400,000; and
Cutting the supply budget in half, saving $1,236,724.
The adjustments, however, are not realistic, district administrators said. For example, the district simply cannot function without basic supplies, they said.
Douglas explained that some of the cuts are "place holders," meaning they reflect number crunching in the easiest places. If the district receives the funding it is hoping for from the Legislature, the supply budget and unallocated funds simply will be reinstated. If the district doesn't get any additional funds from the Legislature, the cuts probably will end up coming in more significant places, like in staff or extracurricular activities.
But because the district won't know if such cuts are absolutely necessary until the Legislature finishes the state budget, administrators didn't want to prematurely fire teachers or anger the community with extracurricular cuts.
Jenni Dillon is a reporter for the Peninsula Clarion
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