Schools feeling pinch from high fuel costs

Spokane Public Schools is facing a budget cut for the seventh year in a row as it deals with declining enrollment, rising fuel prices and higher than anticipated cost-of-living increases mandated by the Legislature.

And it is not alone. Nearly every school district in the county is facing budget cuts, even districts like Central Valley where student enrollment is on the rise.

The district is expecting a $2.2 million budget shortfall for the 2008-2009 school year and has had to make cuts totaling $41.3 million since 2002. In the past, administrators, teachers and classified staff have been cut and the savings account tapped. It is anticipated that student enrollment will drop another 394 in the fall.

“Our target is to reduce our staff equivalent to our enrollments with retirements and resignations,” said Mark Anderson, associate superintendent for support services. “We’re not going to be making big dramatic cuts, because we’ve already been making those. We won’t have any teacher layoffs, we don’t think.”

There will likely be layoffs in some programs that are losing their grant funding, but that’s something that always happens, Anderson said. An example this year is the loss of the Safe Schools grant that pays for drug and alcohol counselors as well as the after-school programs at the middle schools. “We’ve been working hard at finding some other grants,” he said.

Every year the Legislature decides what the cost-of-living increase will be for teachers and classified staff. This year it was set at 4.4 percent; teachers must get an additional 0.7 percent. Retirement and health care costs also went up. The state funds teacher and classified positions based on student enrollment and only provides additional money for raises for those positions. Nearly every district, however, hires additional staff that is paid entirely out of its own budget.

District 81 pays for 100 teachers and 200 classified positions above the state funding formula, which doesn’t include 315 teachers and 186 classified positions in the special education program.

High fuel prices are also a problem even though the district contracts with First Student for busing. It has to pay everything above the fuel price specified in the contract. “We’ve been paying it,” he said. “(The state) is supposed to fully fund getting kids to and from school. We spend $2 million out of our levy that they don’t fund. We run a very economically efficient bus program. Fuel prices are really hitting all of us.”

The Central Valley School district has announced a $1.5 million cut from a $106 million budget. District 81’s budget is $293 million. “That would be equivalent of $5 million for us,” Anderson said. “And they’re growing. It finally points out the funding problem.”

The district hasn’t finalized what will be cut. Community forums are scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at Chase Middle School, 4747 E. 37th Ave., and 7 p.m. Wednesday at Glover Middle School, 2404 W. Longfellow Ave. The public is invited to give input on what sort of reductions the district should make.

Small school districts that don’t fund many positions over the state’s funding formula are feeling less of a pinch when it comes to covering the cost of living increases, but they still face the fuel and food hurdles.

Liberty School District has 500 students. “We’re not looking too bad,” said Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker. “We did have a retirement of a high school teacher with quite a few years of experience. We’re not going to completely replace her.”

Add that to the retirement of a classified staff member and the district should break even, he said. The district also benefits from receiving Small School Enhancement dollars from the state because the high school has less than 300 students. “If we didn’t have any retirements, we would have had to go to reduction in force,” Motsenbocker said.

Freeman School District has used conservative enrollment projections and only has three unfunded positions. “We’re going to make things balance,” said Superintendent Sergio Hernandez. “Our growth is allowing us to maintain where we are.”

The district’s largest problem is rapidly rising fuel costs. The district runs 17 buses over its sprawling 157 square miles. About 550 of its 900 students ride the bus daily. “We just bought 8,000 gallons of diesel for $32,800,” Hernandez said. The district paid $4.02 a gallon. As recently as July the price was only $2.74.