The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Moving closer to the classroom
The hits keep coming for the Gunnison RE1J School District. After this year, when a lot of expected cuts in funding were furloughed by some last-minute financial conjuring at the state capital, another round is coming—to the tune of more than $250,000.
Over the last three years, the district has trimmed well over $1 million from the general fund budget. In the last round of cuts, significant programs or positions were eliminated in alternative education, arts and languages and other areas across the district.
And while the next round of state and federal funding reductions will cause the district to cut a little closer to the classroom, the Administrative Council (AdCo) has indicated that they won’t force any reductions in staff.
Instead, two elementary teacher positions would be lost at both Crested Butte Community School and Gunnison Elementary through “retirement, attrition and leaves of absence,” district business manager Stephanie Juneau said. “It’s unfortunate that we can’t go out and refill those positions. But at least we’re not looking at a forced reduction in those areas.”
The cuts will also set back a budgeted $190,000 textbook adoption, which will keep kids in their current 2002 edition science books and “save” the district that much money until the adoption takes place in the future.
This year there will be more cuts in the state’s per pupil funding formula and reductions in federal grants that together add up to about $288,000, even after an additional $31,000 was added into the budget to account for a final installment of Payment in Lieu of Taxes program coming next fiscal year.
“To match this likely reduction in funding, we are proposing cutting transportation and utility expenses,” Juneau told the board Monday, March 12. “These were the number one and number two areas identified when we asked the public in a survey.”
Juneau said staff could save the district some $55,000 next year just by turning off computers, projectors and other electronics.
The balance of the $288,000 that hasn’t been accounted for in cuts—about $150,000—is coming from the district’s sizeable financial reserves, which have been built up to 25 percent of operational expenses. Juneau said the reserve will still remain well above the legal limit of 12 percent once all the funding reductions are offset.
“The good news about the reduction of the elementary teaching positions is that by shifting up the students per grade level, the class sizes remain inside our district guidelines,” Juneau said. “We haven’t had to talk about changing those for next year.”
Right now, the district allows 16 to 19 kindergarteners per class, 19 to 23 first to third graders per class and 20 to 25 fourth and fifth graders per class. “Some classes will be on the higher end of that next year but still fall in those guidelines,” Juneau said.
School board member Bill Powell said he supported AdCo in taking the $150,000 from the budget reserve as a “wise decision.” He and board president Jim Perkins also asked that Juneau present the board with a summary of how the last round of cuts are working out, what is being missed and what could be cut more if needed.
Juneau said she would have that report, along with a more comprehensive report on the budget at the regular meeting on April 2.
