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Students suffer most as district makes cuts
District could be over $6 million in the red in two years.
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FarkStudents in the Rapid City School District will be hurt the most by the changes school officials are considering to save $4 to $6 million in next year's operating budget, says the district's superintendent.
"Our students are going to feel the cuts," Peter Wharton said Wednesday after announcing that the district is looking at program cuts, salary freezes and an opt out of the property tax freeze.
Options being considered include closing an elementary school, implementing a district-wide salary freeze, or increasing student-teacher ratios. The district is also looking at increasing activity fees, eliminating elementary band and orchestra, the Virtual High School and/or the gifted education program.
Another option on the table is to eliminate the middle school system and return to the junior high concept.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Wharton explained increasing costs for salaries and operations have cut deeply into the district's general fund balance. The district tapped reserves for $4.5 million to balance this year's budget and expects to end this year with only $7.9 million left in reserves.
School board president Sheryl Kirkeby said the board spent down its reserves because Gov. Mike Rounds has criticized school districts for high budget reserves.
When contacted Wednesday, Rounds said K-12 education receives funding every year, and while he sympathizes with the school board, the state is facing similar deficits.
"I can understand their concern, if I hadn't made changes in our budget this year, we would have spent down our reserves too," he said.
All elected officials struggle with balancing the budget, he added.
"That's our job, to take a hard look at the budget," he said. "I sympathize with how hard it is."
Business manager David Janak's projections show the district will be in the red $6.3 million in two years if current spending and funding trends don't change.
The shortfall could grow to $15 million by 2011.
Unless cuts are made now, the district will have only $1.1 million left in reserves at the end of the 2008-2009 school year, he said.
Janak blames the shortfall on salary and benefit increases for teachers and the loss of about $729,500 in expected revenue.
Teachers in the district learned Wednesday afternoon during last-minute meetings that programming changes and other cuts could be coming.
"The message that came through at the meetings appears to be that no one is going to lose a job," said Sue Podoll, co-president of the Rapid City Education Association. "They just may not have the same job they currently do."
School district officials also met with area legislators Wednesday. Janak told them the district has to make changes in order to balance its budget in 2008-2009 and still maintain a healthy reserve.
Rep. Mike Buckingham, R-Rapid City, said he walked away from the meeting confused. Following the meeting, he said the governor told schools to get their budget reserves under 25 percent, not spend it down to 2 percent.
"Frankly, I do not understand the purpose of Wednesday's meeting," he said. "It created more questions than they had answers for."
Buckingham said in the last 10 years, state funding for schools has increased by $56 million, through the funding formula. In the last two years, state spending to schools has increased by $54 million.
"That's huge," he said.
In conversations after the meeting, Buckingham and Rep. Jeff Haverly, R-Rapid City, who also sat on the school board, were surprised that the school board had increased this year's budget by more than $1 million while finalizing the budget last summer.
"We always cut the budget," Haverly said. "You need to be cautious."
Although sympathetic to the district's dilemma, legislators wanted to know why the district had not planned ahead better.
"Every year I sat on the school board we looked at it and found places to cut," Buckingham said. During his four-year board tenure, the district closed three schools -- Lincoln, Garfield and Cleghorn.
"It was not popular, but that was the responsible thing to do," he added.
Wharton said the district has closed schools but has faced the demands of No Child Left Behind while also trying to remain competitive in teachers' salaries.
"People don't understand how the world of education has changed in the last 10 years," said Eric Abrahamson, a board vice president. Abrahamson said meeting the demands of individual students has forced the district to invest more in its teachers and programs.
"Because of NCLB, we are so tightly bound to the outcomes of testing, we've had to offer opportunities (to teachers)," said Nancy Kroeger, co-president of the teacher's union.
According to numbers released Wednesday, the district added 30 elementary school staff positions, 7.5 in the middle schools and 2.5 in the high school and 2.5 Title I positions in the last year. They have also added five administrative positions.
Kroeger said everything the professional development and everything the district has done to assist classroom teachers has been wonderful, but now it all could be in jeopardy.
Cutting or changing any program, whether it's music, sporting activities or a gifted program, it hurts the kids, she said.
"Students are being affected with these kind of changes," she said.
Elementary enrollment
One of the options being considered by the Rapid City School District to save money is closing an elementary school. Following is the list of the city's elementary and middle schools and enrollment by school as of January 18, 2008.
Enrollment Capacity*
General Beadle 366 520
Black Hawk 335 560
Canyon Lake 242 435
Corral Drive 454 451
Grandview 582 604
Horace Mann 272 486
Knollwood 548 640
Meadowbrook 501 640
Pinedale 395 505
Rapid Valley 533 640
Robinsdale 383 640
South Canyon 250 435
South Park 388 451
Valley View 517 640
Wilson 340 378
Kibben Kuster 5
Elementary enrollment: 6,111
Source: *Rapid City Area Schools 2005 Facility Report
Contact Andrea Cook at 394-8423 or andrea.cook@rapidcityjournal.com
Contact Kayla Gahagan at Kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com
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