Hiring freezes in non-instructional roles and position adjustments are currently on the table as Summit School District plans its 2025-26 budget. The district is working against state, federal and local challenges affecting schools in rural Colorado.
Summit School District Board of Education members detailed ongoing struggles with finances from the state and federal level with president Consuelo Redhorse noting "the funding system's broken" and member Julie Shapiro highlighting a "cascading paradigm shift" that's tough to navigate.
Chief financial officer Kara Drake presented the board with different budget scenarios and said the most likely scenarios would put the budget for the 2025-26 year at $54.2 million or $55 million, depending on what cuts board members decided to sign off on. The goal is to have a $54.2 million budget because it would result in an available fund balance of $1.7 million. An available fund balance is a district's unrestricted, available funds.
Drake drew attention to a silver lining of an additional $1 million in per pupil funding from the state going to the district. She said this is largely thanks to the statewide Day of Action March 19, where Coloradans protested the legislature proposed budget that would have given districts less funding than originally anticipated. This prolonged the timeline to implement a new funding formula and kept in place the averaging formula districts use for per-pupil funding.
Despite this, cost-saving measures are needed, she said. The district is considering cost-saving measures, including the reduction of full time employees in central, or administrative, departments and asking those department heads to "reduce their discretionary spending." Additionally the district plans to change the scope and pay of some "director" positions currently vacant by making them "coordinator" positions. A news release sent out by the district after the meeting detailed budget changes could also result in "hiring freezes in non-instructional roles." Another potential saving being contemplated is a reduction of the district's equity director.
Drake noted these proposed reductions follow some substantial ones made last year.
The release detailed a decision made in 2023 to use reserves to raise teacher and staff salaries. Around $3.8 million went toward salary and benefit increases because of it, but Drake said the same strategy cannot be used again.
"This year -- because we've spent down our reserves ... -- we really don't have any more ability to continue to tap into those reserves," she said.
The release stated the decision to use reserves for salaries "came with trade-offs" and said the district continues to face a "structural deficit" where operating expenses exceed recurring revenue. Cost saving measures to mitigate this included a freeze on new curriculum purchases, deferred Information Technology investments, a pause on filling select vacated administrative positions and a 10% reduction across all departments in the 2024-25 budget.
On Jan. 31, a day before the state's Jan. 30 deadline for districts to make mid-year budget changes, the board voted to allow the district go dip into its reserves 0.3.%. This was for Superintendent Tony Byrd's contract negotiations, which this year included a new contingency stating that if Byrd were to be terminated without cause, he would be paid out his salary for 12 months from the time of his dismissal.
Board member Vanessa Agee shared some concerns about the math around this year's budget outlook not adding up. She called out a part of the presentation where $3 million in savings were due to reductions and two other portions of the presentation outlining the district wants to have $2.2 million more in reserves yet anticipates having around $1.7 million in available funds.
She worried it would end up in a situation where the district goes into salary negotiations with district staff and has to say "we don't really have any money to increase your salaries."
"That's really what we're proposing when we do this," she said. "Am I off base here? That seems really challenging."
Drake said it will be challenging to increase reserves, adding it's a "tricky" budgeting year even with more per-pulp funding.
"One month of spending is 8%, so a 10% reserve is just over one month of spending, and so that gives us very little in terms of cash to rely on," Drake said. "We are participating in the cash flow loan program in much greater amounts this year than we have in the past."
Shapiro wanted to know if Drake included anything in her budget planning that reflected the current national conversation around federal funding for education changing on numerous fronts. Drake said she did not given all the uncertainty.
No official decisions were made at the April 17 meeting.
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