News
The 2009-10 school year was a shock for the Garfield School District 16, according to district Superintendent Ken Haptonstall. The school district has seen a drastic decrease in student population in the past two years, which is affecting the district's budget.
“We had seen some students trickling out during the spring of 2009, but (there was) no real indication of what that would mean to our system,” Haptonstall said in a statement to the Citizen Telegram.
Haptonstall said the district planned for a loss of 10 students from the 2008-09 school year to the 2009-10 school year, which he stated was “fairly prudent” considering the district had seen a slight drop in student enrollment but had also been growing at 15-20 percent for the two years prior, he said.
“We build the budget in spring, and we have to have it to the school board by June for the following year,” Haptonstall said. The district had seen a slight decrease in student enrollment by the spring of 2009, “but not a huge drop”, Haptonstall said.
“In the fall of '08, we were still growing. We still had students coming into the district,” Haptonstall said. “We figured we would be 10 students down because we had been about 75 to 100 students up for a few years before that.”
But by Oct. 1, 2009, when the state determines the number of students the district is eligible to receive funding for, District 16 had lost 184 students from the previous year's enrollment — roughly a 13 percent decrease on a single year.
When the district officials were planning for this year's school budget, back in June, they thought that they were being realistic preparing to lose 100 more students than the previous year. But they found their estimate was again conservative.
“We are down 153 kids as of (Aug. 25),” Haptonstall said.
Over the past two school years, District 16 has seen enrollment drop close to 20 percent, from nearly 1,400 students to just under 1,000, according to Haptonstall.
“This is not good for our district that is already shrinking,” he said.
The reason that dwindling student enrollment is bad is because the district receives less funding from the state. And less funding means cutting budget and staff.
“If you budget for only loosing 100 kids, but then you lose more than that, you are way over staffed,” Haptonstall said.
With per pupil revenues at just over $7,000, this meant a budget reduction of nearly $1.2 million for the 09-10 school year, Haptonstall said. On top of that the district also lost about $2 million in state funding after the state made cuts across the board for education as a way to deal with the state's debt crisis.
Last year the district was able to retain its entire staff through the school year due to the contingency fund for extreme circumstances, but when the school year ended the district ended up not refilling 20 teacher positions and nine classified positions due to the budget cuts.
The district currently employs 80 teachers and administration positions, and another 35 positions including bus drivers and all other employees, Haptonstall said.
“We had seen some students trickling out during the spring of 2009, but (there was) no real indication of what that would mean to our system,” Haptonstall said in a statement to the Citizen Telegram.
Haptonstall said the district planned for a loss of 10 students from the 2008-09 school year to the 2009-10 school year, which he stated was “fairly prudent” considering the district had seen a slight drop in student enrollment but had also been growing at 15-20 percent for the two years prior, he said.
“We build the budget in spring, and we have to have it to the school board by June for the following year,” Haptonstall said. The district had seen a slight decrease in student enrollment by the spring of 2009, “but not a huge drop”, Haptonstall said.
“In the fall of '08, we were still growing. We still had students coming into the district,” Haptonstall said. “We figured we would be 10 students down because we had been about 75 to 100 students up for a few years before that.”
But by Oct. 1, 2009, when the state determines the number of students the district is eligible to receive funding for, District 16 had lost 184 students from the previous year's enrollment — roughly a 13 percent decrease on a single year.
When the district officials were planning for this year's school budget, back in June, they thought that they were being realistic preparing to lose 100 more students than the previous year. But they found their estimate was again conservative.
“We are down 153 kids as of (Aug. 25),” Haptonstall said.
Over the past two school years, District 16 has seen enrollment drop close to 20 percent, from nearly 1,400 students to just under 1,000, according to Haptonstall.
“This is not good for our district that is already shrinking,” he said.
The reason that dwindling student enrollment is bad is because the district receives less funding from the state. And less funding means cutting budget and staff.
“If you budget for only loosing 100 kids, but then you lose more than that, you are way over staffed,” Haptonstall said.
With per pupil revenues at just over $7,000, this meant a budget reduction of nearly $1.2 million for the 09-10 school year, Haptonstall said. On top of that the district also lost about $2 million in state funding after the state made cuts across the board for education as a way to deal with the state's debt crisis.
Last year the district was able to retain its entire staff through the school year due to the contingency fund for extreme circumstances, but when the school year ended the district ended up not refilling 20 teacher positions and nine classified positions due to the budget cuts.
The district currently employs 80 teachers and administration positions, and another 35 positions including bus drivers and all other employees, Haptonstall said.
Re-2 maintains staffing levels
Over at Garfield School District Re-2, budget cuts have also affected the district dramatically, however the district has maintained its level of staff as possible.Re-2 slashed $4.4 million, an 11 percent decrease, from the district's 2009-10 budget of approximately $40 million to $36.4 million.
The district ended up not giving any annual pay raises to employees, added four furlough days to the school year, and while the district didn't lay off any staff, the district didn't re-hire 14 positions that were left vacant from last year.
However, the cuts mostly affected classified positions and administration, according to Re-2 director of districtwide services Theresa.
“Everything we looked at was based upon student enrollment projections and focused cuts on the administration side, trying not to impact the classrooms,” Hamilton said.
