District adopts "red ink" budget

The Mountain Home School Board has elected to roll the dice and pray the legislature will restore funding to education next year.

The district's board of trustees has proposed a "negative funds" budget for next year. Based on current funding and projected expenditures, the district's budget would be between $400,000 and $500,000 in the red by the end of the next school year.

"We're going to gamble on the legislature, rather than gamble on the kid's education," said school board chairman Jim Alexander.

The district will be making cuts in a number of areas but the trustees did not want to start chopping programs they have spent years developing, and which they believe will be needed to help students meet the state-mandate achievement standards that go into effect in three years. This year's freshman class will be the first graduates who will have to face those standards when they become seniors.

Without any of the cuts the district is making, however, the district would be $1 million in the red by the end of next year.

The district will lose nine certified staff -- two school principals and seven teachers -- who will be lost through attrition. Both principals have resigned, at Stephensen Middle School (which the district is closing -- see our story next week about those impacts) and at McKenna High School, the district's alternative school. Supt. Jerrie LeFevre and Deputy Supt. Doug Johnson will assume the administrative duties at McKenna.

The seven teachers either resigned or retired, but to fill some of those gaps the district is cutting two counseling positions and moving those counselors into teaching positions, resulting in a net loss of five teachers. West Elementary, the base primary school and Liberty Elementary on base will go from full-time counselors to half-time counselors, as the district adopts a "traveling" counselor program for the elementary schools, and Hacker Middle School will go from 1.5 counselors to one. There will be no changes in the counseling staff at the junior high or high school.

The district also will cut back on supplies by 25 percent, the activities/athletic budget will be slashed by 35 percent, it won't be buying new textbooks, and will be cutting back on maintenance staff. A number of building repairs will go on the back burner.

In addition, a large number of library aides, teacher aides and office staff will be eliminated, bringing the total staff losses for the district to 21 persons.

"Unfortunately, these fine employees cannot be given a reasonable expectation of employment next school year," LeFevre said in a letter to the staff sent out last week. "However, persons affected by this action will have an opportunity to apply for any open positions that may occur." The cuts in the athletic budget will involve several assistant coaching positions, as well as the activity bus program that provides transportation for students to base following after-school activities, and the elementary track meet.

LeFevre said that the cuts were designed to make the district as fiscally sound as possible without unduly jeapordizing the continued achievement of students. "While many of these decisions are agonizing," he wrote in his letter to the staff, "I am confident that by working together we can overcome these obstacles, and that better days, in all aspects of our chosen calling, are ahead of us." Both Alexander and LeFevre praised the teacher's union for their attitude in facing the cuts, which include no raises for next year, although they admit, "there's a pall that has fallen over the (contract) negotiations."

"I think it would be accurate to describe their reaction as stunned," Alexander said, "but they're working with the same numbers we are.

"They realize the fix the legislature put us in this year," said Alexander. "We're all gambling that the next year will be better." If not, serious cuts in teaching staff would be likely he admitted, as well as many of the programs the district has developed to ensure student success in school.

A lot of budget work -- the fine details -- remains to be done, but, Alexander said, "we're trying to hang on to the staff we've got and the programs we spent years building. Will we be able to? I don't know.

Alexander noted that most members of the legislature had opposed "unfunded mandates" when they ran for office.

But, he said, "the heartburn I have, is some legislators said we should just dip into our fund balance, and if that isn't an unfunded mandate, I don't know what one is. A lot of district's, like us, didn't have a lot of excess funds, we've tried not to tax our patrons more than we needed to, but anybody who had funds balances won't by the end of next year. "That discretionary money isn't discretionary any more. The legislature just spent it for us."

In addition, he pointed out, federal funding resources, which account for $7 million of the district's $22 million budget, are declining.

LeFevre said average class sizes would rise slightly next year, but noted, "we don't think this will last forever. "We've faced deficits before, and we probably will again. We have to take the risk, because the next steps are not pleasant steps.

"There's room if we want to devastate the educational programs of this district. But you'd wind up doing things like cutting PE and music in the elementary schools, doing away with the middle school, and going to super-big class loads in places like kindergarten to second grade. The problem is, if you do that, you pay for it for the next 12-13 years.

"We can do it," LeFevre said, "but we just choose not to. We don't feel like it's in the best interests of the kids," and educational excellence and school safety issues for the students must have the top priority, he said.

"What we want for these guys (the legislators) to think about," Alexander said, "is these are real people out there, not just numbers, and what they do impacts programs and lives.

"The point is, these cuts are not victimless. They affect kid's education, and it will be hurt. "But I promise," Alexander said, "our kids will be educated, regardless of what these external problems are."