State Actions Make It Difficult For District To Make Ends Meet

The superintendent explained that Governor Doug Ducey’s budget cut the restricted assistance or as district officials call it, unrestricted capital, which will cut non-instructional areas such as sports and music.

He said that cuts were approved by the legislature, but because they come from unrestricted capital, some districts won’t even be able to meet their lease payments, though the Snowflake district is not one of them.

“We’re cutting from capital, so for us to maintain buildings, buy supplies and things, it’s going to become extremely difficult to move things forward,” said Merrell.

“Our community has to make some important decisions moving forward, because it is becoming more and more difficult for the district.”

The district has had to cut $600,000 and that doesn’t include cuts to capital expenditures, which will take the cuts to $900,000.

“One of the challenges with the budget cuts is we see people at the state level saying schools can survive and they aren’t closing schools,” Merrell continued. “Kids deserve more than that, they deserve all opportunities to be successful.”

A March 13 memo from District Business Manager Mark Ollerton to Merrell states, “The district and education community in the state of Arizona are facing legislation that increases funding in some areas of the budget and decreases in other areas. A big challenge that the district is facing is declining enrollment. This declining enrollment makes the cuts even worse. As the administrative team approached the budget for this next year it was the desire of the governing board and administrative team to address the wages of staff,” so a salary proposal was presented to the board March 16.

Changes presented and approved by the board included: a 1.59 percent increase to the base support level, which totals approximately $157,000; $54.31 per weighted student count (a one-time partial payment for the state’s negligence in funding the base support level according to statute for the past five years) will bring $163,723 to the budget for three years; District Additional Assistance (DAA) is estimated to decrease significantly; medical premiums will increase by three percent; the weighted student count is down 134, which when applied to the lower Teacher Experience index reflects a decrease in the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) Budget of approximately $404,000, the second largest decrease to the budget aside from DAA.

Ollerton further noted that the additional cuts to DAA for the district will increase from $700,000 to over $1 million. “This is the fund we buy all capital items for the classroom and the facilities. This is a dangerous cut to both the education process, as well as the safety and learning environment of our children,” states the memo.

Proposed cuts to the M&O budget were listed, including one maintenance position which will be cut through reduction in force, and a teacher and counselor, who will go to third party contracts which pay them 80 percent of their salary with no benefits. This means that teachers will retire and continue with their present position, which saves the district money, but keeps experienced personnel. The cuts total $602,646.

“If we have to face these types of cuts next year, we’ll have to make some extreme decisions,” said Merrell. “The legislature is making decisions, but we’re the ones that have to fix the problem. The burden is being pushed off on the local taxpayer, and that trickles down to the kids.”

The state gave the district a $1.59 inflation factor increase, Merrell explained, noting, “We came out a little bit ahead overall, just barely, but we still have to cut $300,000 from our capital budget.”

“Schools like us that receive a lot of money from the state, and our local tax dollars raise a very small portion of the budget, are going to hurt, too.

“Our tax dollars are being used as efficiently as we can,” said Merrell. “It’s the issues that are forced upon us that create a lot of problems, but as far as the district, we’re doing really well.”

Overall, the district did get an increase because of the partial settlement on the Proposition 301 lawsuit, from which it will receive $157,000. “That’s how we are able to give increases,” said Merrell, pointing out that it would only be for three years.

“One reason we felt like we need to give a raise is employees are falling behind because retirement is going up and insurance premiums are up, so they have been losing salary. We have employees going above and beyond who are doing everything they can to make our students successful,” said the superintendent. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it had we not received that little increase that we can use for raises.”