Beech Tree News Network

The Butler County Board of Education met in regular session Tuesday, February 14 at 6:30 p.m. after an hour-long working session. With approximately 60 people in attendance for the board meeting, several voiced their concerns about the district’s financial situation. All board members were present: Greg Moore, Debbie Hammers, Amy Hood Hooten, Delbert Johnson, and Karen Evans.

During the working session, Superintendent Howard told the board, “A lot of things are flying around out there that are far from true. There seems to be an emphasis on the overspending. I’ll take full blame for overspending, but that was part of the plan because if you look back from 2002 to now we saved a million dollars. It didn’t make sense last year to have that much of a surplus and lay people off. If we had not received the state cuts, I would recommend to overspend this year.” Howard went on to say that several people have said “cut at the top.” He said, “We are trying to do that. I have a proposal to cut some money from administrators. I can also tell you that as people retire from the central office, the next two anyway, they will not be replaced. But I cannot force people to retire, and I wouldn’t even dream of it anyway.”

Several questions were asked by board members during the working session and several alternatives were suggested as ways to save money. District Finance Officer Eric Elms explained to the board that Mr. Howard had asked him to devise a plan that would balance next year’s budget. Elms explained that when 74% of your budget is payroll and benefits, that will have to be where the bulk of the district’s savings come from. According to Elms, if the board wants a balanced budget next year, 37 positions will be affected. He said, “What I mean by the positions being affected is either cutting them back tremendously or if we have someone leave, maybe that position wouldn’t be filled. Positions can be teachers, custodians, instructional assistants, or secretaries.” The following number of positions will be affected in the district: 6.17 at the high school, five at the middle school, 9.5 at Morgantown Elementary, 5.75 at North Butler Elementary, two at the central office, three special education positions, two bus driver positions, and four from the Alternative Learning Center. Elms said, “The number of positions affected is tentative. We have to give SBDM councils a tentative allocation for the upcoming year by March 1st. This tentative allocation balances the budget, but new ideas may come forward that could change the final allocation that is due to site base by May 1st.” Superintendent Howard told the board members “We’re going to do whatever we can to keep as many people working as we can.”

During the board meeting, Mr. Elms addressed the crowd and explained the district’s financial situation. “There has been a lot of talk about us overspending this year. Well, we are overspending. We are overspending $299,000 this year based on what we were given from the state at this time last year. You might say why are we doing that. We started this plan in about March or April of 2008 when all the federal stimulus money started coming down. I know all the board wasn’t here, but there were a lot of you here. We decided we were going to try to save as much federal stimulus money as we could that way when the time came and the economy would turn even worse, then we would have the money to overspend a couple of years. At first it was a four-year plan. We would save for two years, and then we felt like the next two years would go down considerably. It ended up being a five year plan because as you can see in 2008, we started out with 1.9 million dollars. In 2009, we went up to almost 2.3 million. In 2010, we went up to $2, 450,000. Then, 2011 was supposed to have been a year that we felt like we would start going backward, but we actually broke even almost.” Elms went on to explain that it was decided “if we overspend $300,000 this year and $300,000 next year we will still have 1.8 million dollars, and we can still keep people in the county employed. Our main objective was to keep people employed and basically try to save the money through people retiring or through people leaving the district. As you can see in 2002, we only had 1.4 million dollars. Over the years, we have gone up from there.”

Many people at the meeting and in the community were under the misconception that the board was spending money the school system didn’t have or that the district was “in the hole.” This is not the case. The board chose to spend more money than they had allowed for in their yearly budget. The overspending was taken from the board’s general fund and savings.

Elms told the board members and the audience, “In our budget right now, if I left every employee where they are and we kept the supplies, fuel, and electricity basically the same . . . based on what we’re getting from the state we would overspend $1,362, 493.50 next year more than what we brought in. People ask how that happens and I said the same thing. Well, we’re overspending $300,000 this year; if nothing had changed we would have been overspending $300,000 next year. The SEEK cut . . . this time last year our tentative SEEK was 9.9 million, this year our tentative SEEK is 9.2 million. They’re cutting us $714,870.  Our rank and step increases (teacher’s pay increase for getting a rank change or for number of years worked) average about $150,000 a year. Our Property and Fleet Insurance went up to $105,000 over the last year.  (CLARIFICATION: According to District Finance Officer Eric Elms, the school district learned on Wednesday, February 15, that the insurance numbers are not as high as projected. After consulting with the insurance agent, it was determined that some insurance payments made in June 2011 were for the 2012 fiscal year, therefore doubling the amount paid in the 2011 fiscal year.  According to the local insurance agency, the school's total insurance package increased only $3,350 between 2010 and 2011). Other projected increases like supplies, diesel, etc. are $75,000. When I do all that, my total comes up to $1,344,321.78. The only way we can break even next year is through payroll and that’s people’s jobs. That is hard for me to stand up here and talk about. Seventy-four percent of our budget is payroll and benefits, 14% is reoccurring costs (utilities, insurance, fuel, garbage collection, bus payment, etc.), and the other 12% of the budget is for supplies, repairs, technology, etc. As you can see, the biggest part of our budget is in payroll. In the other meeting we had, I gave the board a balanced budget, and it basically comes out of the payroll section. In December, we got a mid-year cut that we didn’t know anything about. This time last year the state said they were going to give us 9.9 million dollars in SEEK money. Our fiscal year starts July 1st. Then all of a sudden in December, they came in and said they were only going to give us 9.5 million. So, they cut us $380,000 mid-year. There was no way we could budget that because we had no idea they would do that.”

After the budget report by Eric Elms, Superintendent Howard offered the audience time to ask questions. Dionne Merritt addressed the board and Mr. Howard saying, “I am a parent of a future middle schooler and a future kindergartener. I respect everyone in this room. You do a great job, and I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.” The first question Merritt asked was about funding for the athletic field house, ball fields, and bus garage. Howard said, “That is a great question, and I’m glad you asked. The money that was used on the athletic field house or we just call it the practice facility now because the band and ROTC use it . . . That was pure construction fund. No general fund money. In other words, the money that was used on the baseball/softball fields, the practice facility, and the renovated bus garage was in a construction fund account and it could not be used for anything else. We did not use general fund money. You might ask about the utilities on that. The field house right now is costing as much as an average size house, about $150 a month for utilities.”

Another question was asked about the cost of the maintenance on the softball and baseball fields. Howard said last year a man mowed the fields for free, and, in return, the booster club gave him a sign to advertise his business.” Mr. Jimmy Arnold said the water was less than $700 last year. Arnold said, “I tell you what helped us on the water. We did a separate meter on that, so we’re not having to pay sewage on that.” Howard also added that now that the district has their own fields, “we are able to charge admission for people to come watch our kids play ball and that is something we didn’t ever get to do.”

Another topic asked about was if the district’s bus garage mechanics were able to keep the majority of the district’s work in-house. Superintendent Howard said “a computer software program has recently been purchased to plug in our busses and allow our mechanics to do our diagnostic tests here.”

Howard was also asked if school employees had been given any bonuses. He replied, “I think everybody in here will testify they haven’t had a raise from me since I’ve been here, and that’s been four years.” The next question asked was if the schools have a recycling program. Superintendent Howard told the board and audience that the school system will be partnering with Aleris to start a recycling program in all the schools, which will generate money.

Community member, Jason Jones, suggested “thinking outside of the box” before making drastic cuts. He asked if a revised calendar similar to Webster County’s could be an option. Superintendent Howard said there had been talk about a four-day week for quite some time but said you have to look at daycare issues for parents. He explained that the savings from a four-day week would come from bus drivers and food service workers because they would lose 20% of their pay.

Another audience member asked if there had been any study of a tax increase and what that revenue would do. Mr. Howard said, “It varies from year to year. If the board ever decided they wanted to go that route, by law they can take a 4% increase that is not subject to recall. I don’t recommend we do that at this time. We looked at it last year, and it wasn’t a lot of money that it generated. It varies year to year based on the property tax.”

Mr. Elms said, “Our property tax assessments went up. If assessments don’t go up, the 4% gets you quite a bit more money. If assessments do go up, it isn’t a lot. I don’t even know if it was enough to save one teacher’s salary last year.”

Howard told the audience “It is my goal not to eliminate any program, but we’re going to have to get creative.” He said coaches are working together to determine ways to reduce spending within their programs so that one particular program won’t have to be eliminated. Howard said “We’ve talked about reducing schedules, training coaches to drive the busses; we’ve talked about assistant coaches.” Howard said this is not about pointing fingers at people. “I will take all the blame for overspending $299,000 because I recommended to the board to do that so we wouldn’t have to lay people off. We had 2.4 million. I can’t lay people off when we have 2.4 million dollars. If we hadn’t have gotten the state cuts, I would’ve recommended we overspend again to keep from laying people off. That’s why we saved for four years to get that balance up there so we could do that.”

Mr. Howard said, “It’s a bad time for education right now, but it’s about the kids for me. I’m going to try to do the best I can for the kids.”

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Story by Paige McKinney, Beech Tree News

Photos by Jeremy Hack, Beech Tree News