School budget caught at the whims of state funding give and take

State considering bill that would cut school funding

Just when the Gunnison RE1J school district thought it had gotten a financial break with extra funding from the federal government, they discovered that more than half of the money could go to fill funding cuts from the state.

In January, when the budget for the next fiscal year was being formulated, district business manager Stephanie Juneau found out that the school would be receiving $70,000 from a federal program that compensates districts for non-taxable federal land, known as Payment In Lieu of Taxes, or PILT.
“We’ve got PILT in the bank, which is fantastic,” says Juneau.
Then, in response to the worsening economy, Governor Bill Ritter announced significant budget cuts to all government programs, including education, to help reduce the projected $625 million 2009 budget shortfall.
Now, both the Colorado House and Senate are considering bills that could cut the funding the district receives from the state for each student by $19.72. Multiply that by the 1,700 students in the Gunnison RE1J school district and the district stands to lose almost $44,000.
If the bill passes, and Juneau is confident it will, the district is out more than $14,000 for each of the remaining three months of the school year.
“It may not sound like that much in terms of the overall budget, but that’s everything. The state’s share helps in addition to what the district gets from taxpayers, but that’s how the school is funded,” says Juneau.
The district took steps in February to cut costs by freezing any discretionary spending.
Juneau says about 85 percent of the district’s expenses are for salaries and benefits. The rest, she says, goes to running the district’s daily operations, and the only cuts available will be made in the classroom.
“If a teacher had $1,000 to spend on classroom supplies and only spent $500, the other half would go back into the general fund, “ she says.
Juneau says she isn’t sure what the state’s share of funding will be for next year either, since it is based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the state has not yet released those numbers.
“The state won’t tell us what the funding level will be until the end of April—it could be as soon as April 27. We will wait until we have a figure before doing too much with the budget, because we don’t know how much we have,” said Juneau.
Juneau hopes to get next year’s budget to the school board by early May so it can be reviewed and approved by the board by the June 30 deadline.