$1.3M Pendulum Swing

At last night's Finance Committee meeting, a major budget development was revealed.

The bottom line:
Instead of taking $800,000 from Fund Balance in addition to making $1.2M of temporary budget reductions, after virtually all bills are in, the budget picture grew a whole lot rosier.
We actually INCREASED Fund Balance by $500,000.

That means a net change in the budget picture of PLUS $1,300,000

You will hear the details of this at tomorrow night's public hearing on the budget.

What does it all mean?

Remember all those snide comments about those horrible elector type people that severely damaged the district? Nuh uh.

Remember all that fear mongering about "the rebound effect" and that our credit rating would drop? Poof!

Perhaps the board's "outcry" regarding the electors' decision was more feigned than real. The district likes to have their play money, but very clearly, we CAN do just fine---in fact have a surplus--even with a little cutting.

Yes, Virginia, there MUST be a Santa Claus....because, in the end the levy was reduced by $2,000,000 and we STILL had a surplus of $500,000.

2010-11 Budget - the Question That Needs to be Asked

Dear Sun Prairie School District...

I read daily about other school districts making massive cuts to their 2010-11 budgets. Most are freezing salaries and even cutting staff, particularly the highly paid administrators. What PERMANENT cuts have you included in your 2010-11 budget proposal?

Answer: $21,000

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING US?

Your $72.3M budget contains exactly 21 THOUSAND dollars of permanent reductions?

Did you slip and fall and hit your collective heads causing amnesia regarding what happened at last year's annual elector's meeting?

The economy is still in the tank and you're still feeding the 800 lb gorilla?

Good luck with that.

Ssshhh! Let's Not Say Anything About SAGE Changes

As we navigate the budget waters, one thing that is NOT being discussed is pending changes to the state's SAGE (Student Achievement Guarantee in Education) program. As budgets have become tight, the SAGE program has come under fire in districts across the state and even here in Sunny Prairie.

The SAGE programs requires that districts maintain a student:teacher ratio of 15:1 in grades K through 3, in each school designated as "SAGE". In Sun Prairie, both Bird and Westside elementary are SAGE schools. You might also recall the hubbub surrounding the last boundary change, as both Bird and Westside were caught in the crossfire.

The good thing about SAGE is that we get additional state aid for every child eligible for free/reduced lunch at SAGE schools.

The not-so-good things is that lower student:teacher ratio can tend to cost us more money than we receive in return from the state.



What would SAGE Changes Mean in Sun Prairie?
As one would guess...if you increase the class size, eventually it comes to a point where, at most grade levels, less teachers would be needed. Think about it...if class sizes are limited to 15 kids (as with SAGE) and a sudden budget decision calls for class size maximums to now be 30 kids, you could potentially cut 50% of teaching positions.

Reducing teaching positions is not a happy thought...especially for those whose jobs would be on the chopping block. The grim reality, however, is that these are still tough times, and tough times call for tough measures.

How many positions would be at risk? Our guess is that about 4 positions would/could be cut as a result of SAGE changes. If one "does the math", we have 135 1st graders at Bird and Westside this year, resulting in 135 kids and 9 positions. At 18 kids per classroom (instead of 15), we would only need 7.5 teachers. Of course, we round up because we only hire whole teachers. So in 1st grade alone, we'd create one position reduction.

If you do that for all 4 SAGE grades, it would seem that we could "cut" 4 teaching positions at a net budget savings of about $200,000. While it is difficult to make these tough decisions, we don't feel the change from 15 to 18 kids per SAGE classroom would result in a decline in the quality of education being delivered. And realistically, there has been talk, on a number of occasions, of eliminating SAGE because the SAGE program DOES cost us more than it yields in aid.

So, it all boils down to a $200,000 reduction in the budget, which translates to lower property taxes. And--since these cuts would go towards the 800 lb. gorilla, i.e., personnel costs, we would be making a permanent cut to the budget instead of the one year fixes adopted last year.
Worth playing for?

Now we just need to trim administration.

Diedrich & McCourt Hold the Line on Personal Appliance Fees

During last night's school board Finance committee meeting, the budget cuts initiated in November were reviewed. This opened the door for discussion about one cut--or rather CHARGE--- in particular: personal appliance usage fees.

One of only two permanent budget reduction initiatives was the genius idea to

"B. Recoup energy cost by charging employees who wish to have personal appliances in the workplace.

Projected Savings: $ 6,000

Rationale: Many school districts charge a fee for staff to have personal appliances in their work areas. These include coffee makers, microwaves, and refrigerators. This charge recoups the cost of electricity for the items used. A guideline and rates will need to be developed.

Citizen representative Rick Mealy asked Deputy District Administrator Phil Frei to respond to public complaints that there is a lack of equity in the fees. One cited example was lack of space for staff to store their lunches, prompting them to bring in small "dorm" refrigerators. Frei admitted that those staff who work in newer buildings have a refrigerator in each "pod", whereas those in older buildings might share one refrigerator.

Frei also agreed that the charges being assessed were not "reality-based" but simply taken based on Energy Star estimates of electricity usage. Finally, Frei acknowledge that the district has had discussions with the Teachers' union officials regarding displeasure with the fees.

Mealy brought discussion to a halt by making a motion that the district cease the practice of assessing personal appliance fees. Citizen Representative Harold Rayford seconded the motion.

Caren Diedrich vehemently indicated that she would NOT support the motion, stating that, "We went in and said everything must be cut; everyone needs to share the pain of the $2M tax levy reduction." Diedrich further noted that, "because the district has cut out buying pizza for staff, you better bring your own bag lunch to Negotiations Committee meetings."

Jim McCourt stated that he agreed completely with ]Ms. Diedrich]. He said, "the board was looking at everything, and I do not agree with taking anything off [the list of budget reductions]"

Terry Shimek indicated that he needed to abstain [as his wife is a SPEA member], but noted that, "It's only about $10 per employee."

The result of the vote was 2 votes in favor of repealing the Appliance Fees (Mealy, Rayford), 2 votes against (Diedrich, McCourt) and Shimek abstained. The 2-2-1 vote means the motion failed.

Nothing dies in committee!
The good news is that because no issue dies in committee [Thanks MaryEllen, for THAT little nugget of weirdness] this motion will be put to vote by the full school board at the next school board meeting (March 8).

We're pretty sure that the full board will vote the motion down as well. Why? Because with Shimek abstaining (does anybody else notice that that happens a lot?) there will be only 6 effective votes and 4 will be needed to adopt the motion. We KNOW Diedrich and McCourt will vote "NO". We've also heard that David Stackhouse has privately told folks he'll vote "NO" as well. We're also pretty sure that John E. Whalen will vote with his troops, thus ensuring the continuation of the Appliance Fee fiasco.

We're wondering if there's a hint of retaliation tactics at work here. Hmmm....the teachers vote down the idea of volunteering a furlough day, so board members respond by holding the line on a silly fee. Stranger things have happened in this district. We bet the next board- SPEA contract negotiations will be an order of magnitude more icy than the classrooms these days.

SP-EYE: We find it funny that when Mealy spoke out about spending money on Kit Kat bars, pizza, and memorials, board members and district administration got all syrupy talking about how they value their employees, and these are such small costs to bear to keep morale high. Newsflash, people...the morale of your staff is at an all time low and now YOU are the one nickle and diming them with silly Appliance fees. At best you hope to recoup $6,000 with this monumental move? WTF! That's a whopping 0.008% of your $68 MILLION dollar budget. Phil Frei missed a 20% increase in the cost per student charge for the JEDI virtual high school student fee. With 9 kids in the program, that amounts to $7,200 NOT budgeted...or 20% MORE than what the district hopes to regain via Appliance fees. None of the board members seem concerned about the $7,200 unbudgeted charges for JEDI, but they sure want to stick it to the teachers in the form of Appliance Fees!!!

2010-11 Budget Prep: What Others are Doing But SPASD is NOT

Last November, citizen representative to the Finance Committee Rick Mealy requested that the district immediately begin planning--and share with the public-- budget information for the 2010-11 school year. Of course, that request was ignored.

We've all heard bits and pieces of clandestine conversations. And none of the news is good. No wonder why the board doesn't want to discuss it: talk is that the tax levy increase will be between 15-18%. Rumors about the size of the pool? Sheeeah! People aren't talking about the pool being short a few inches (which it is not). People want to know HOW BAD IS THE BUDGET ?

Of course, maybe the board isn't worried. After all...SPEA has declared that they will attend the electors meeting in force to ensure that whatever levy is needed to keep their jobs and salary increases will be voted in.

Good luck with that. A significant percentage of SPEA members don't even live in the district---and thus cannot vote. And if SPEA doesn't think the community heard the gauntlet being thrown down last week....tsk tsk! Sure is nice that the new high school auditorium seats 2100!

What has Sun Prairie done so far? NOTHING...at least that its willing to share. In fact, the Finance Committee didn't even have time at its meeting this week to "review" (not COMMENT ON, mind you) the budget calendar. It does seem a tad odd that after all the grandstanding about personnel costs representing nearly 85% of the budget, and knowing that we have the SPEA contract settled already...shouldn't the budget be 85% complete??? And isn't that enough to share as a DRAFT proposed budget?


Just so you get a flavor for what OTHER similar size districts are doing already--and sharing with the public, we offer these capsule summaries. As always...don't believe us...believe the facts. Read for yourselves. Then YOU decide if the school board should be doing more...NOW!

Stevens Point
Stevens Point Journal article, 1-26-10.

Stevens Point School Board additional $917,000 cut from 2010-11 budget.
Jan. 26, 2010. The Stevens Point Area Public School District School Board on Monday cut an additional $917,500 from next year's budget.
The board unanimously approved the cuts, which include transferring some administrative salary costs to federal money used for special education students, delaying its technology equipment replacement plan and reducing the amount of money the district pays into the post-employment benefits.

Wisconsin Rapids
WI Rapids Tribune article, 1-26-10

Jan. 26, 2010. Superintendent Bob Crist delivered nearly $2 million worth of proposed cuts to the school district's 2010-11 budget Monday night during a board workshop.
The list included proposals to move grade levels to new buildings and reduce staff, services and programs in the district, which has a total budget of about $60 million. Like many school districts in the state, Wisconsin Rapids has faced annual budget deficits as staff costs increase at a faster rate than state aid.
For the second straight year, board members will consider moving some or all Pitsch Elementary students to Howe Elementary next fall.

Appleton
Letter to public from Appleton "Superintendent"

The Appleton Area School District (AASD) has begun budget preparation for the 2010-11 school year…. In order to balance the budget and account for projected increases in expenditures, it will be necessary to reduce the EXPENDITURE side of the budget by $2.4 million. While the budget will not be finalized and approved by the Appleton Board of Education until October of 2010, it is necessary to make initial staffing plans at this time in order to meet course scheduling and contractual timelines.
To balance the budget for the current 2009-10 school year, the district reduced non-personnel related expenditures by $1.2 million and reduced a total of 31.5 positions across all employee groups.
At this point, we have identified $2.82 million dollars in INITIAL REDUCTION RECOMMENDATIONS (Non-Personnel & Personnel). Community and staff feedback regarding proposed budget reductions as well as suggestions for other budget areas to consider for reduction will be sought at FOCUS GROUP sessions throughout the month of January

Tomah
Tomah Journal; article 1-22-10

Tomah Journal. Friday, January 22, 2010
School district faces $1.2 million structural deficit

The board established a timeline for hammering out the 2010-11 budget. The tentative calendar is as follows:
*Feb. 16. Special board meeting to review the proposed budget repair recommendations.
*March 16 - Special board meeting with possible action on budget repair recommendations.
*April 15 - Regular board meeting with budget repair on the agenda.
*May 20 - Draft of 2010-11 budget completed.
*June 30 - Special board meeting for preliminary budget presentation.
The school district’s annual meeting is Monday, Aug. 9. The final budget must be approved by Oct. 31.


Middleton-Cross Plains
MCPASD News
Future Projections:The financial picture for our school district will be challenging over the next several years. A recent budget forecast projects structural budget deficits of approximately $1.2 million in 2010-11 and $1.7 million in 2011-12. In addition, the budget forecast projects a 15% reduction in state general aid each year for the foreseeable future. The anticipated reduction in state aid will definitely impact future school tax levies in our District which are estimated to increase from 4 to 6 percent annually over the next five years