By Patricia Bogumil
Washington-Caldwell School District officials have called a special meeting for 6 p.m., Monday, Sept. 29, in the school gym, to seek taxpayers’ input for handling the district’s financial issues in this and next year’s budgets.
“We have some tough decisions to make,” said Superintendent Mark Pienkos.
Taxes will need to be raised in the 2014-15 budget, he said. “If we don’t raise taxes, we will soon have our fund balance exhausted.”
Staffing cuts have already been put into place, but budget expenses will have to be further reduced, Pienkos added. “We’re going to have to cut expenses, and we’ll do that, but we’re also going to have to raise taxes.”
Several factors are squeezing the school budget between a rock and a hard place.
• Enrollment at Washington-Caldwell continues to decline.
This year Washington School has a total enrollment of 173 students, 4K through eighth grade. Last year’s enrollment was 186. This year the district will graduate a large class of 27 students.
“We are having fewer students enroll in our kindergarten than are graduating from our eighth grade, which means we are in enrollment decline,” Pienkos said.
• State aid is dropping. “We are projecting a decrease of approximately $144,000 in state aid this year,” Pienkos said.
• Property values in the district have dropped and taxes being collected are too low to be sustainable.
“We have raised the mil rate only once in the past six years,” Pienkos said. Last year, the tax rate went from $7.50 to $7.80 per thousand dollars of property value.
“Due to property value declines, the net effect was that the district actually received less tax money from local taxpayers,” Pienkos said.
The combination of all these factors means that even if taxes are raised this year, money will still have to be taken out of the budget’s fund balance.
“If we continue to take money from the fund balance this will accelerate its reduction, and that means an even higher tax rate is needed to run the school district,” Pienkos said.
The school district has been very conservative in its
spending policies, Pienkos added.
“We have no debt,” he said, and important improvements have been made to the school building and its educational programs.
The success stories at Washington-Caldwell are many, he said, including an “Exceeds Expectations” rating on the state’s annual Report Card, and recognition by the state as a “High Progress School” for a 10 percent growth in student reading and math.
Monday’s special meeting is not intended to be a battle, Pienkos added, but rather an opportunity to learn and come up with tough decisions to solve the budget issue.
“I see this as an opportunity to come together,” Pienkos said. “I am optimistic and believe we will come up with the solution.”
-
-
-
-
-