PITTSBURG, Kan. — While school administrators are hopeful that the current economic situation doesn’t affect this fiscal year’s public school funding, what they worry about most is next fiscal year.
K-12 funding was one of three issues discussed at a recent public send-off for Southeast Kansas legislators; the others, gambling and transportation, also factor heavily into the state’s dwindling budget.
“The consensus is they’re not going to be affected; we’re not going to change them in the middle of a budget year,” said Rep. Julie Menghini, D-Pittsburg, of school districts. “They’ve already hired folks. They have programs in place. That would be a really undesirable situation for everyone involved.”
Baxter Springs Superintendent Dennis Burke said a program the district recently implemented that deals directly with at-risk children and their literacy is a program that can’t afford cuts, as it lays a critical educational foundation for those students.
One component of the program, Multi-Tiered Support Systems (MTSS), enables school personnel to diagnose beginning literacy difficulties and address them in small-group settings during kindergarten through second grade. MTSS also is in place in Baxter Springs’ intermediate building.
The additional funding the district received for that program, Burke said, is vital to its success.
“The money we have received for our economically disadvantaged students has gone directly to making them proficient readers at an early age,” said Burke. “Research shows how critical it is to develop this life-altering skill as early as possible.”
If funding is cut, he worries, the district won’t be able to sustain the support for the teachers directly involved with starting the MTSS program.
As for cuts in future years, Burke said the district can handle adjustments to the budget if given sufficient time.
Meanwhile, Robin Dexter, interim superintendent in Pittsburg, is breathing a little easier thanks to an increase in student enrollment, giving the district an advantage when it comes to the funding it receives for each student.
Although she’s not counting all her eggs just yet — nothing is finalized, as the auditor was just in town last week — she anticipates it will be enough that if she’s asked to cut the budget, the added enrollment could make up the difference.
However, next budget year could prove a problem, depending on what the Legislature settles on as a final figure for per-pupil funding: Originally expecting an $80-per-pupil increase, districts were told early on to expect a $59-per-pupil increase instead; now, they are expecting no increase per pupil at all.
In a district with an enrollment of 2,739, that equates to thousands of dollars.
“That’s when we start looking at negotiations, talking about raises for staff, and those will be definite issues impacted by what could happen next year with funding,” Dexter said.
Pittsburg ranks as the fourth highest in the state for certified-staff salaries, averaging a 4.5 percent raise that puts them “closer to where teacher salaries need to be,” Dexter said.
But the district also has teachers moving horizontally and vertically on the salary schedule, which means the district will be faced with how to fund those moves as well as equivalent raises for classified staff. Additionally, after current construction at three of the district’s elementary schools to provide room for all-day kindergarten next year, the district will need to put additional kindergarten teachers on the staff roster.
A feather in the district’s cap is recent savings on energy costs. In September, the district completed the third year of an energy conservation contract in which it saved about $700,000.
“The hard part is, we just use that money we saved for something else, so it’s not like we’re coming in with any extra,” Dexter said. “If we didn’t have that, there would be programs we wouldn’t have.”
Area superintendents agree that knowing how to stretch dollars is nothing new — it’s something that goes with the territory.
“If we can not lose money, we’ll find ways to tighten up,” Dexter said. “The scary part is every year not knowing. That makes long-term planning hard.”
Menghini said she hopes that school funding next fiscal year at the very least can continue at its current level.
“We may have to postpone bringing in increased dollars we were looking at putting in,” she said. “The best-case scenario, most likely, is maybe maintaining where we’re at currently and just postponing added funding.”
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