Schools

Talk of the District with Corey Lunn: Update on the Budget Adjustment Process

Stillwater Area School District Superintendent Corey Lunn writes about the updates to the budget adjustment process.

Over the last several months the Budget Adjustment Advisory Committee (BAAC) has been meeting to provide guidance to the School Board as .

The BAAC is made up of community members, school staff and student representatives. Most of their work has centered on the prioritization of more than 200 cost-saving ideas generated by the community. The committee has worked with district leaders to analyze each suggestion, determine which ones would be feasible and place those ideas into three tiers representing approximately $4 million each (total of $12 million).

Tier I includes actions that will have the least impact on students and classrooms and represents the first choice of reductions. Tier II items have an increased impact on students, and items in Tier III have the most impact and are the last recommendations to consider.

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The items on these lists represent fund transfers, staff reductions, program changes, transportation and school start and end time changes, fee increases, calendar adjustments and class size increases. The complete list can be found on our website.

Using the BAAC recommendation as a guide, the board will determine which items they will cut to reduce next year’s budget.

Find out what's happening in Stillwaterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On Jan. 5 the board . That means another $8 million will need to be cut for the coming school year.

The reason we worked with the community to identify $12 million in reductions is three fold:

1) To give the school board some leeway in the decision making;

2) To provide flexibility to respond to community feedback;

3) And to identify the next layer of cuts that could be made in the future.

We already know we are facing an additional $2 million in reductions for the 2013-2014 school year as a result of one-time funding shifts in this round of cuts. Should a future levy request fail and our existing levy expire, we will be faced with another $10 million shortfall for 2014-2015.

There are no easy decisions and the board is seeking your feedback as they consider the many options before them. It is important to remember that any item that is removed from the list as a result of the community’s feedback must be replaced with another item.

Balancing the needs of all students, while responding to individual concerns, will be an immense challenge for our School Board.

I was very impressed by the more than 100 people who attended the first public hearing on Jan. 17. Again and again I heard people voice their support for our schools, the children in our communities, and the programs that have made our district one of the best.

I was also reminded of how many people have chosen to move to our area in large part because of the reputation of our school system. Without a doubt, our schools are a tremendous asset to our communities in that they not only create a vibrant place to live, but also attract more residents to help offset the taxes needed to support what we value most.

The next public hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at . The public can also provide feedback during board meetings in the month of February.

In addition, we have an online forum set up to collect feedback from the community, and my new superintendent’s blog provides an opportunity for further discussion. Both of these online resources can be found on our webpage.

I also want to point out that this budget adjustment process started long before we made our levy request this past fall. We knew we were facing a $10 million shortfall, and over the summer we determined that there were approximately $5 million in adjustments that we could make in order to lower the levy request.

As we predicted then, the first list of adjustments will have a lesser impact on our students and classrooms; however, things quickly change after that. Tier III includes things like eliminating funding for our free all-day kindergarten, dismantling our strong elementary music program and reorganizing our successful activity programs that have brought much pride to our communities.

During the past levy effort many people commented to me that once we adjusted our budget they would be more willing to support our efforts. As your superintendent I can promise you that this budget tightening will not stop after this round of cuts are approved.

I am committed to continue findings ways to be more efficient, reinvent our schools and direct more resources into our classrooms. I ask you to join me in this process. 

Superintendent Corey Lunn can be contacted via email at lunnc@stillwater.k12.mn.us and/or phone at 651-351-8301.


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