The Emporia Gazette

February 3, 2012

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There were no sacred cows Wednesday night, when the Southern Lyon County board of education began making cuts to help eliminate the $202,836 the district has lost since July in state aid per-pupil.

The state had pledged $4,433 base per-pupil aid at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year, before rounds of cuts pushed the amount of aid down to $4,012 per-pupil.

The cuts on Wednesday hit everything from administrators’ salaries to coaches and extracurricular activities. It was a strong start toward compensating for the $202,836 that was lost during the last part of the year.

“We have not filled in the cuts yet,” Superintendent Mike Argabright said. “There will be other things discussed. ...

“We have started looking at the 2010-11 budgets, and just looking at different options to make sure that we’re providing the programs and necessary things for our kids, to fill the hole that we have. So that has started. People need to know that.”

The district last spring had reduced the budget a significant amount by reducing teaching staff by 5.5 positions.

At the meeting on Wednesday, the board made these additional cuts:

• 5 percent voluntary salary reduction for the superintendent.

• 3 percent voluntary salary reduction for building principals. One of the principals was given the option of a 3 percent cut or discontinuing summer school and his $4,000 stipend for that facet of his job; he chose the summer-school option.

• Eliminated seven classified, non-teaching positions.

• Reduced all classified wage (hourly) employees 1 percent beginning Jan. 18.

• Reduced all classified salary employees 2 percent beginning Jan. 18.

• Utilities turned off at Neosho Rapids buildings that no longer were being utilized for educational purposes.

• Reducing two afternoon bus routes, also resulting in a reduction of driver hours.

• $25,000 reduction in rotation plans, routine maintenance and repairs that usually are done as summer projects.

“We reduced them; we didn’t eliminate,” Argabright said.

• Reduced building budgets by a combined total of $30,000.

• Athletic directors and principals are working to secure volunteers to work extracurricular activities, which in the past have been paid temporary positions.

• Eliminated summer driver’s education and moved it to the regular school year.

“This is a good and a bad,” Argabright said. “We’re going to move it back into the school year next semester, and we reduced the fees to the students to $100. They were $200.”

• Did not fill two open positions; both were track coach jobs.

• Reduced professional development.

• Reduced field trips, confined now to Lyon County unless trip is pre-paid by PTO groups or by parents.

“That’s it for now,” he said. “... We’ve made a run at it, but we’re not done yet.”

While the state was busy reducing the per-pupil base state aid, the district has simultaneously been losing funds overall because of declining enrollment for the past several years. The full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment in 2004 was 574; for the 2009-10 school year, the unaudited FTE is 495.8.

“Across the state, there’s going to be significant damage done,” Argabright said of the general state of education in Kansas.

Many districts are doing damage control, he said, ‘and it’s almost beyond that, and still provide the programs and the necessary preparations that they need and in some cases they’re required to have.”

The failure to fund public education — though that is mandated by the state Constitution — has made education an increasingly less-attractive career field.

“Our public education right now is pretty volatile,” he said. “So I would say, under the scenario, it would make a lot of people hesitate. There’s not a lot of security right now for young teachers, and that’s pretty sad.”

Argabright said he would like for legislators to take a look at potential sources of revenue that could help avoid the massive budget cuts seen this year in per-pupil state aid.

“The legislature needs to take a look at the tax abatements and things they have allowed to happen over the course of even the last five years, and I would say as many as 10 (years), to fund public education, which is in our state Constitution,” he said.

“I just hope that our general public is paying attention to the effects that this is truly going to have on public education. We have, across the state, we’ve done a very good job of managing what we have and making things work, and patching things up, and it’s beyond that now. It’s going to affect the classroom.”