Budget 2011-2012

As I stated in the Pre-K story, the budget process is underway. Cutting Pre-K is not the my only suggestion for getting the budget under control. I have also made other recommendations.
 

Eliminate Pre-K saving $107,000.00 according to Central office. I believe it to be more.
Eliminate all Intervention Specialist saving $127,636.00 plus benefits.
Eliminate Family Resource program saving $73,000.00 plus benefits.
Implement a 3% across the board reduction saving $1,121,495.00.

There are also other issues that I have brought to the budget committee.

Reduction in travel reimbursement budget to only mandatory and state and fed. Reimbursed. This year’s budget contains $111,472.00 in travel reimbursement.   

This years budget contains $184,893.00 in employee supplements. The question is, is there any room for savings here. I think there is. Below are the current supplements.

Academic supplements $10,238.00
Athletic supplements $109,492.00
Assistant principal supplements $24,000.00
Duty Free Lunch supplements $20,433.00
Data Entry supplements $15,916.00

There is the matter of just how far over the state BEP (Basic Education Program) funding we are in certain areas of staffing.

The most glaring is with teacher assistants, Parapros. The BEP has allotted us for 48 Parapros. We have 130. That makes 82 over BEP. According to staff some of the 82 are covered with funding from Federal and Obama money but even at that we’re still way above. Of the 48 positions that the BEP funds, BEP only pays 74.4% of those 48 positions. Local money funds the other 25.6% of the 48 and 100% of all the others. The average Parapro pay is $15,485. Every 10 Parapros over BEP cost us $154,850.00 plus benefits.

In K-12 certified teachers we are over the BEP by 41. In central office and administration we are over BEP by 9. In non certified other than Parapros, we're over about 14.

There is certainly room for the board to take action to bring the school spending under control, if they will.

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3/21/11