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Culver cuts school by $50K
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · January 21, 2009
Gov. Chet Culver’s 1.5 percent across-the-board budget cut means about $49,600 less in state aid for West Branch Community Schools in the last six months of the budget year, according to a December report.
Culver’s order was based on figures released by the Revenue Estimating Conference in early December.
West Branch Superintendent Craig Artist said the current economic difficulties make the cuts no surprise, but this is the first time he’s seen state aid go backward since he came on board.
West Branch schools will receive about $3.4 million in state aid this year, which is the basis for the 1.5 percent cut. The school district’s total budget is about $7.2 million.
And Artist and School Board President Mike Owen expect more cuts to come.
“Fifty thousand dollars in cuts is not huge in comparison to $7 million,” he said. “But it does play havoc with our future.”
Owen said that cuts in this year’s budget could have an impact on next year’s budget. Even halfway into the fiscal year, cutting now is better than waiting, he said.
The Iowa Department of Education released a report Dec. 18 that listed how the governor’s cuts would affect individual schools. State funding is based on enrollment. West Branch’s enrollment has remained relatively stable, aside from a spike in this year’s kindergarten population that school leaders plan to watch to see if it is an anomoly or trend.
“Something is going to have to be reduced,” Artist said. “Something has to give.”
In a memo to Iowa schools, Iowa State Association of School Board’s Larry Sigel said there is also a 1.5 percent reduction to categorical funds, like teacher quality, class size and at-risk grants, but the memo did not include how that affected individual schools. West Branch does get some funding those ways, so Owen said the total cuts will exceed $50,000.
The $49,600 amount equals about 1.5 teachers’ salaries, but the superintendent said the district is “not in an overabundance of employees,” so do not expect to see teachers getting laid off.
Sigel points out that midyear layoffs of contracted staff due to budget reductions is “illegal.”
The announced cuts are not yet final, and the Board of Education has not had a chance to review possibilities.
Owen said that Culver’s decision to cut the budget came before the state legislature reconvened, so the announced cuts had to be equal across the board to meet the state’s balanced-budget requirement. However, with the legislators back in session, they and the governor can now prioritize funding and cut less-important line-items.
“Not all state spending is of the same priority,” Owen said. “If education spending is a priority, then cutting it at the same percentage of something that is a lesser priority is not the proper way to go about it.”
Owen said he hopes some of that funding can be restored, though he believes the district can absorb all of the $49,600.
“We have some means in our financing to do that, but not all districts can,” he said.
Artist wants to see what legislators do, which should give schools a better idea of where they stand.
“We still have a long ways to go to determine how to do this,” the superintendent said. “If the cuts are deep, we’ll see how deep they are over the next few months.”
Sigel said there is so much uncertainty in the economy that there is no reason to trust the REC figures are the start of a trend.
“No one can say at this time whether the spring estimate of the REC will be a revenue improvement or further reduction,” he wrote.
Owen fears that long-term cuts could mean raising property taxes to keep pace with costs.
“We just need to keep our eyes on the landscape,” he said. “At this point, we’re not sure what we’re going to do.”
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