School District trims $800,000 from next year’s budget
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
With a projected shortfall of $484,000 in the 2015-16 East Troy School District budget and the loss of the $258,000 in state funding for the district in the governor’s proposed budget, the School Board approved a series of budget cuts at the April 27 board meeting.
Added to the $742,000 to trim off the budget, the district needs $82,000 to expand programing, bringing the total amount needed to cut for next year’s budget to $824,000.
The board tentatively approved the cuts at the April 14 meeting, but there were a couple of items that board members requested additional information on. The board approved the final list of cuts at the April 27 meeting.
Business Manager Kathy Zwirgzdas told the board that some of the cuts were offset by things like retires in the district falling off the retirement health insurance plan ($110,000) and an 8 percent savings on employee health insurance ($388,000).
In a letter to staff that Zwirgzdas sent out last week, she also noted some staffing changes will save the district another $65,000. Those changes affect eliminate FACE (family and consumer education) classes at the Middle School and High School. The high schoolers may have the option of taking Gateway classes in some of those areas, but the middle schoolers will have to choose another elective.
Another big cut will come in the form of the Middle School athletic program. The district is moving to an intramural program next year to save another $30,000.
The district is also eliminating forensics from the High School, to save $10,000. Principal Rick Penniston told the board April 14 that the program is not utilized by many students and, unlike the Southern Lakes Conference schools, the Rock Valley Conference forensics program was not a big draw for the kids.
The district staff and administration also agreed to a salary freeze for next year, saving the School District $26,000. Then School Board President Ted Zess said at the April 14 meeting the staff and administration offered to take the pay freeze to help the district out and he wanted it known that they were not asked to do this by anyone.
Other budget cuts included savings from replacing a retiring teacher, a projected $15,000 savings in the district’s short-term borrowing, $18,000 in increased employee health insurance contributions, a $74,000 savings resulting from an 8.5 percent reduction in the districts variable site budgets (meaning everyone has to find a way to cut that much from their budgets), an projected $15,000 savings in Wisconsin Retirement System premiums, $17,000 in life insurance premiums, a $10,000 line item reduction in the fund balance, and a $37,700 savings by reducing the “cash in lieu” amount to $5,500 from $6,500.
There is hope that some of the money the district lost with the governor’s proposed budget will be put back and some of the cuts could be undone, but Hibner cautioned the board to be careful what they chose if that happened because he didn’t want them to put something back into the budget that they would just have to cut again next year.
“Stay away from ‘cliff items,’” Hibner said.
Zess said he had attending meetings with Rep. David Craig and he was “very optimistic that some, if not all of the money would be put back” for the schools.
The School Board members briefly discussed the possibility of eliminating the pay freeze for the staff and administration as a top priority, but since they won’t know for a while whether it will be possible, it was tabled for future discussion.
For more information about the budget cuts and the School District’s finances, go to www.easttroy.k12.wi.us.
Wi-Fi at home
At the April 14 meeting, Tim Griffin asked if the district had numbers on how many kids had Wi-Fi at home with the move to 1:1 Chromebooks for most of the children in the district next year. There was no one at the meeting able to answer Griffin’s question, so he sent an open records request to the School District asking for information on Wi-Fi availability at home which was Technology Coordinator Justin Modrak, but did not contain the information Griffin asked for. The survey results referenced in the open records request only asked if students had “access to the Internet outside of school.”
Griffin’s concern is that there are far more kids than the district realizes who don’t have access to Wi-Fi at home. Wi-Fi access is vital for the kids to be able to use their Chromebooks, because they are web-based devices that have limited use when not connected to the Internet.
